


CronusQuest

by Laskara



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Aggressively American author, Multi, shitpost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 33
Words: 65,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16981875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laskara/pseuds/Laskara
Summary: The following fanfiction contains course language, and due to its content, should not be read by anyone.





	1. He leave him house

The rain beat heavy on his window as Cronus looked around his shitty, barren room. His bare mattress, his empty walls littered with sticky putty where his pictures were once adhered, his shitty eighties print carpet used in high traffic areas to delay wear. Today was the day he'd finally been kicked out of his childhood home for his frequent outrageous outbursts of unconcionable behavior- but the memory of the exact reason was something he'd repressed. Now it laid with all the other repressed memories about having been supposed to be an alien and shit. Sealed in a shitty inferior trash bag without the nonripping powers of Gladd bags were the only things that mattered to him, several posters featuring Danny Zuko from the movie grease, a large variety of haircare products, and his leather jacket which obviously could not be worn out into the rain. All he had left to do was successfully make it from the basement to his ratty white panel van with a wizard painted on the side, already loaded with almost all the rest of his posessions, without encountering his furious father. 

Picking up his shitty nongladd trash bag, he counted down from three and tried to hurl his shitty human body up the stairs as fast as he could, his unathletic feet scrambling on the creaky wooden stairs, his snobby fake wizard brother Eridan and furious pushover mother could be heard hollering, drawing nearer and nearer with accusations about his behavior, questioning how he could have done such a horrible thing. Football tackling straight through his mother, he entered their tackily decorated blue and white kitchen just as the threatening sound of his father creaking down the stairs from his legal office began.

Wasting no time, he jumped out the window over the kitchen sink, dragging his trash bag behind him as his chonky and terrible younger brother hissed and threw trash at him, screaming that the garbage is where he belongs. Due to its shitty non-gladd qualities, it immediately tore, dumping his personal items(mostly combs and haircare items) into the sink. "Fuck! Fuck my life! No!" He screeched, gathering it into his arms as his father marched menacingly forward, the last stair creaking like the trumpets of the apocalypse. 

As the man drew near, paint peeled off the walls, metal rusted, and pigments faded to a filthy brown color under the pressure of his now activated resting bitch face. The resting bitch face of the Ampora patriarch was so severe that it was a medically diagnosed condition. A pregnant woman had once suffered a miscarriage as a direct result of exposure to his RBF. Cronus and Eridan both lived in fear of the day they'd inherit his condition, and as he approached too closely, Eridan hissed like a cornered rat and scurried into the basement to protect himself. In a panic, Cronus gathered what fit in his arms and ran around to the patch of parking lot where he kept his shitty panel van, throwing everything into the back and then scrambled back to the garage, pressing the button to make it open and waiting impatiently for it to work, the sound of his father and mother yelling in the kitchen telling him his time was running out. 

He got his shitty crotch rocket motorcycle loaded into the van and was almost back around to the front when his father kicked open the back door. All the grass within a five foot radius immediately wilted, turning black, wet and sickly with a waft of mold. His Yaya screeched as her horrible son wilted all of her plants on the path to the van, still dressed in his work from home freelance lawyer suit, his faux leather loafers seding wicked tendrils of doom into the earth. 

Cronus froze involuntarily and his cheeks drained of color as he witmessed the activated RBF, taking a moment to regain his senses. He slid across the hood to the drivers side like the Duke boys as his Yaya started throwing rotten cucumbers at her across the yard, then tucked through his window and took off just as his father reached the van. He pummeled the wizard painting on the panel as the boy drove off, speeding to get a big head start for the ensuing pursuit. 

Fortunately, said pursuit never came, and the lad realized he was now homeless as he sat in the Dennys parking lot. "Fuck!" He screamed, beating his head against the horn and creating a scene in the rainy new jersey parking lot. "Fuuuuck!" People walked by with their umbrellas, headed stalwartly toward their grand slams and moons over mihami without any concern for the boy's plight. 

Finally, claity came over him and he realized what he had to do. The depressed and dejected boy called his only friend; Kankri. 

"Hey, bro, I don't mean to only call you when I need something, but I need something. Again."

"I'm listening Cronus, but only if you can explain to me what it said in that book on queer theory I asked you to read on your vacation." 

"Kankri please, not now, I am under a lot of emotional distress."

"Come on. Its not that hard."

"I've been kicked out of my house!" 

"You didn't actually read it, did you?"

"I'm telling the truth. I need a place to stay, Kankri." 

Kankri sighed deeply. "Cronus, you can't come here. My mom still won't forgive you from the time you threatened to tittyfuck Karkat because he wouldn't let you play his nintendo." 

Cronus laughed at the memory of his old joke, the memory of karkat squirming with his shirt held over his head and his fat little boy titties pressed around a cucumber. "It'll be fine, just don't tell her I'm there."

"Cronus, my family already does not like me." 

"It'll be fine, I'm quiet. I'll get a job and get out in a week, I promise. Until then I can read queer theory and talk about politics with you and you'll always be right because I can't afford to argue." 

Kankri weighed his choices- on the one hand, his parents would definitely call the police if they saw cronus around. On the other, someone would unquestioningly accept his political authority. 

"Alright," he said, "come over."


	2. Kankri's house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cronus goes to Kankri's house. It's rude, lewd, and has unflattering discussions of trans male genitals to display the immense density of Cronus's skull. Please do not read this if you are feeling dysphoria or can easily be triggered into dysphoria at this time. They will have a good sex scene later when I'm back in the US and allowed to post it. If you wish to proceed, I mark the start and end of the potentially triggering scene with a dash line.

As night fell, the rain continued and the temperature dropped, and as agreed in their conversation, Cronus parked his van in the woods out behind Kankri's house over in the rich part of town, which permanently smelled like spices, chipotle and curry, which he assumed was a result of being behind Kankri's house. He picked up a bunch of dead branches, wet lacy fallen leaves from last autumn and pine needles to throw all over his van to disguise it as a car wreck so Kankri's parents wouldn't realize he was living in their expensive home, then made his dangerous trek through the creepy, spicy woods to sneak into Kankri's back yard. The tiny forestlette was deep, dark, and spooky. He immediately, due to his poor night vision from a diet made up primarily of Hochland cheese toasties despite his yaya's attempts to feed nutritious garden vegetables to the family, tripped and fell into a slow moving creek just out of earshot of the road. 

"Fuck!" He screeched, soaked with muddy and toxic suburban filth water that'd probably run through 36 separate parking lots before blackening his white shirt. He pulled himself out of the gross, sucking mud and onto the steep bank, mean mugging a hapless toad for judging him. "What do you think you're looking at you disgusting bumpy fuck? I'm the top of the food chain, motherfucker. Get ATE son." He threatened, snapping his hand out to grab the amphibian and stuffing it into his mouth. Having never bitten a live animal before, the struggle and crunch alarmed the idiot boy and he spat out the wounded toad immediately, screeching with alarm and disgust, his mouth flooded with hallucinogenic toad juices and his hideous night about to take a terrible turn. 

Cronus looked into the forest and saw it swarming with wonderful and colorful lights which hadn't been there before. He stripped off his clothes and rolled them all up inside of his shirt to wash at Kankri's house, stumbling barefoot through the fresh, green spring undergrowth in what he hoped would be the correct direction. Remebering Tavros and Rufioh's dumb stories about fairies and how nobody who values their life and intact functional body parts should have anything to do with them, he attempted to avoid the colorful lights, but the closer he drew to Kankri's house, the brighter they became, dancing and flickering in the chilly night air. "Oh god, fuck. Please. No", he mumbled, stumbling through the flickering and colorful lights and into two beings he assumed must be faeries themselves. Appearing as Kurloz and Rufioh's dumb younger brothers as well as that weird enthusiastic vegetable girl Karkat always hung out with, the three supernatural entities bore beautiful glittering insect wings, wire and crystal crowns, and were ethereal to behold, wreathed in stunning halos of color. The three were gathered around a stump they had wedged a picnic table umbrella into, candles and incense burning, wands in their hands. All three were staring at Cronus, so he froze, assuming faeries must be like the tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park and would be unable to see him if he didn't move.

The Jade lookalike fairie moved toward him with a vegetarian celerity, shining a flashlight in his eyes and gibbering something barely understandable about dilated pupils. Before he could gather himself, another faerie had appeared, this one resembling Karkat with brash and firey feathered wings, with a serving tray bearing a fuckton of shitty microwave express curry and burrito meals he deposited on their stump table. The Karkat faerie waved his hand in front of his face while grumbling furiously in a crackly teenaged voice, then just opened his mouth and screamed wordlessly as loud as he could, his hands balled behind him in fists; but Cronus was disciplined and he didn't move an inch, despite repeated, incredible urges to vomit and an alarmingly elevated heart rate . Finally, the three of them took their curry, blew out their candles, and waddled away rapidly, turning off their mysterious lights and piling into Kankri's basement. 

It was only then that it snapped into place that he'd actually seen Karkat and his friends playing outside and that he had stood in the cold showing his frosty and tiny shriveled wiener to his classmates' younger siblings and Jade for at least two hours. He vomited the entire contents of his stomach onto the ground directly in front of him, completely ruining their fun faerie forest with the sick stink of his last meal of Hochland cheese toasties stewing in stomach acid all day and waddled into the basement after them, immediately throwing his ball of gross clothes into the Vantas family washing machine shoes and all with three delicious, minty looking gain pods and vomiting into the basement sink beside it twice. 

He turned around to see Kankri, who immediately hollered and thrust him by the shoulders into their basement refrigerator, where normal children would keep their online gaming snacks but the Vantas boys kept only frozen spicy non GMO gluten free vegan rice and vegetable meals, primarily curry and burrito themed, from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, CRONUS?!" He screamed at a wholly unusual volume. 

"I'm doing a little sneaky to get inside your house, obviously. I had a little hangup and fell in the river out there, had to put some nasty little swamp goblin back in its place by doing it a monch and then hid from some faries. NBD, man. Why does your family eat nothing but curry?"

Kankri slapped him across the face. "THE THINGS YOU SAID DIDN'T MAKE SENSE! YOU SHOWED A BUNCH OF FRESHMEN YOUR NUDETONE TUNNEL SNAKE AND MY PARENTS ARE BUSY DOCTORS AND NO ONE TAUGHT ME OR MY BROTHER TO COOK FUCK YOU!" He slapped him again for still having his gross muddy wiener out even though there was nary a sock in which to wrap his package. Kankri dragged him upstairs by the scruff like a naughty kitten and threw him into the bathtub, then turned the shower on. The rush of cold water over his already chilly skin almost drowned out the sobs of the sad children in the family kitchen, who Kankri was attempting to console with more microwavable hippy rice snacks so that they wouldn't call the police. 

After what seemed like hours of scrubbing, Cronus decided he was sufficiently gunk free and wrapped up in a towel to go explain himself to the children, but found only Kankri's father, eating midnight curry and burritos with a spork in his white doctoring coat. The two looked at each other, both raising their hands into a defensive posture to judy chop eachother in the throat. "Why are you here, frozen fuckboy?" Dr Vantas (md) asked. "Did you impregnate my eighteen year old daughter?" 

"What? There's a girl in here?" 

"I have to tell her to stop dressing like a boy. Ugh." He spooned more organic non GMO gluten free midnight burrito into his face exhaustedly.

"You have two sons, what are you talking about?"

"Well, that answers my question, there's no way you slept with my awkward manly daughter and still think she's a boy." 

"Who are you?" Cronus asked, "do you live here? I think you went home to the wrong house. This house is full of sons, not a single daughter to be found." 

Dr Vantas nodded and looked into his curry questioningly. Cronus continued. "You probably wandered into the wrong house, I'm having a sleepover with my friend Kankri. Get your tired ass back into your car and eat your stolen microwave hippy curry and chewy burritoes in your own kitchen with your pants off. I won't call the cops." 

Dr Vantas grabbed his keys off the counter, pulled his pants back on and waddled back out to the car with his shoes halfway off his feet. "I'm sorry for invading your slumber party, frozen fuckboy, please carry on with your activities." Cronus nodded and gestured to the front door, exploiting the exhausted doctor's extreme end of shift sleep deprivation. As soon as he had left, Cronus entered Kankri's room, passing a bunch of pictures in the hall of the Vantas family, featuring some pissed off looking chick he didn't know and had never met instead of Kankri.

He threw open the door and dropped his towel. "Kankri! Give me your pajamas!" He bellowed.

"Cronus? Dude shut up keep it down my dad is home," he whispered from under his comfy cozy wonder woman comforter. 

"Naw I convinced him he was at the wrong house again because he kept calling you a girl. Idiot falls for it every time." Cronus waved his hand to indicate the easy-peasiness of his dismissal of the Vantas patriarch. 

"Cronus, I told you, my father is not an idiot, he works eighteen hour shifts at the hospital and doesn't give a fuck about anything when he comes home. Please stop gaslighting the poor man, he works hard ok?" Kankri pleaded. 

"Oh my god, it's not a big deal. He just drives around the neighborhood looking lost for twenty minutes and comes back home. He's good." 

"The man is a immigrant who grew up next to a minefield and left his home and his family to come to the United states as an airplane stowaway Cronus, he is traumatized enough without your help. Please stop telling my dad he's at the wrong house every time he catches you here, he's starting to think he's got dementia. He's been to the therapist. Don't lie to him you coward, just jump out the window like a normal teenager." 

Cronus held his hand flat in front of him as he looked up toward the ceiling in thought, turning his wrist to wiggle it diagonally as he weighed his options. Finally and decisively, he said, "eeeh... nah. Now gimme some pajamas." 

With great disgruntlement, banking on his week or more of complete political agreement, Kankri threw Cronus the biggest fattest xxl tshirt he had, the one from the mandatory 'fun run' his school had the previous year that he received because they were all out of t-shirts for non xxl- sized boys. He threw it on and crawled straight into the bed like he was fucking allowed. Kankri blushed and contained a scream of confusion and discomfort at the boy's audacity as he put his chilly frozen rocky feet against Kankri's regular temperature fleshy human toes and cozied his butt up to his crotch flirtatiously. "Cronus what the fuck are you doing now?" 

"I'm collld!" He whined. "Heat me up daddy, uwu~."

"Cronus this is the grossest thing you have ever done, and I am embarrassed on your behalf", the beet red social justice boy whispered. 

"I'm not on the floooor yet tho, somebody likes it" He moaned. 

"I am doing this in the interest of preventing your progression from mild to severe hypothermia as indicated by your exceptionally delusional and strange behavior and for no other reason", he insisted. 

Cronus snaked his hand back around to grab Kankri's dong through his pants only to discover no dong. "Oh, I guess you don't like it. My bad." 

Kankri sighed. "I don't approve of you trying to molest me, Cronus, but I actually like it a lot and this is the only romantic attention I have ever received, so despite my displeasure and embarrassment that it is you trying to engage me in the two man horizontal truffle shuffle and my concerns about what I will tell our fellow students when you inevitably tell them absolutely every sordid detail of our ill advised and regrettable sexual encounter, I regret to inform you that I just don't have a dong. Not all boys have dongs, and I am a dongless boy. One boy, no dong."

"Oh, well it's rude as fuck of your dad to insist you're a woman just because your dong's gone. Would he be a girl if his dong was gone? You should ask him that." 

Kankri nodded. "I do, nearly every day." 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where did it go though? What became of your dong?" 

"I never had a dong, Cronus. I was born without a dong. Never did I ever have a dong, or a faint chance of a dong. The future held no dongs for me at the time of my conception." 

"Must be all the gross wartorn country chemicals your dad was exposed to, to make your tiny fetus dong gone before it even got a chance to bone, so sad" Cronus mused. 

"I mean, medical science has several theories on what results in the birth of dongless boys, Cronus, ranging from genetic anomalies and stress during the pregnancy to an insensitivity to the body's naturally produced hormones resulting in abnormal brain activity when compared exclusively to a binarist standard, but not only do I disagree with the medicalization of my state of existence, I don't think chemical exposure to the father during his childhood is one of the aforementioned other theories. Anyway you have to tell me what I asked you to read on your vacation now, about queer theory." 

Cronus flinched, as he had indeed not read the book he was given, which sat in the corner of his van unread, nary a bookmark between its girthy pages as they spoke. He thought really hard about tumblr, and atempted to bullshit his best. "So uh basically, being straight and cisgender isnt normal just because it's so common, and uh, we are challenged to queer gender and the preconceptions of the cis hetero patriarchy by living our queer and authentic gay lives." 

Kankri nodded. "You may stick your hand in my underpants now. But be advised, I am still celibate." He nodded again decisively, and Cronus slid his hands into Kankri's damp boxer breifs. 

"Uhhh... please tell me that isn't your booty hole I just slid my finger inside." Cronus begged. 

"Nope, that's the dong I've got instead of a cisheteronormative dong", Kankri explained. 

"Kankri that's not a dong at all, that's a pusspuss." 

"It is my dong. Don't deny my truth." Kankri explained. 

"I expected you to be like a Ken doll or something, I'm really confused. What kind of mutant chemical exposure makes a dong into a pusspuss?" Cronus said bewildered. 

With great irritation and a loud sigh, Kankri grumbled. "You can appreciate my so called pusspuss for the glorious queer experience that it is or take your grubby hand back out of my underpants and sleep under a highway overpass like a regular homeless teenager." 

With a sudden gasp, Cronus whispered with excitement, "it's ok! I found your dong! You should have told me you had a smooth, greasy micropenis you dumb dick. I'd have been much less surprised. You didnt need to give me a book about being politically gay, I dont care what your dong looks like." 

Kankri was super mad, but too enthralled with the dong attention to correct Cronus and explain to the idiot in his bed that he was very obviously a transman and that everything Cronus had just said and done was horribly mean.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

After having crude, lewd and inappropriate relations in Kankri's parents house, the two slumbered peacefully until Kankri's alarm rang and he ran out of the house to go participate in debate club, leaving his dumb boyfriend's idiot ass lying insensitively in his totally dope wonder woman bed. 

Upon waking at the crack of noon, Cronus wandered into the kitchen to have a breakfast of shitty microwavable spicy hippy food with a free range organic egg cracked into it when he ran into Mr. Vantas again. 

"Excuse me toasty fuckboy, did you sleep in my daughter's bed with her last night?" He asked.

"You're at the wrong house you fucking idiot, how many times are you going to make this mistake old man?" He shouted confrontationally and with a great deal of confidence. 

"Fuckboy! You, who threatened my only son! Leave my home and my daughter alone or I'm calling the police! Get out! Now! My wife already told you never to return, and here you are with the audacity to cohabitate with my daughter, eat my food and throw your smelly shoes into my washing machine, telling me I'm at someone else's home. What would your parents think?" 

Confronted with something he'd never seen before, Kankri's awake and alert fully functional father, he immediately changed his demeanor, sniveling and tearing up. "My Pa kicked me out of my house, alright? I have nowhere to go. I slept on the floor ok? I'm a good boy!" 

"If you're such a good boy, why are you kicked out? You, who threatened to tittyfuck my son." 

"I'm gay. I'm sorry for the things I did while I was figuring myself out." Cronus sobbed whIle lying. His parents knew he was bisexual and it had never been a problem. 

The dignified doctor clenched his fingers, steam billowing from his ears. "Alright, fine, you can stay here, but you may not leave Kameela's room at night, because of your threats to my boy. I'm sorry, I just can't trust you." 

Cronus thanked him, then danced victoriously and went to snoop around the house for clues as to who the fuck Kameela was and why Kankri lived in this house even though he was clearly not a part of this family acording to a single family photo. "They must adopt queer kids for social justice cred with their classy doctor friends", he said with a shrug.


	3. He hunt him job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cronus finally gets a job. The Vantas parents fight about Kankri's gender identity.

Newly accepted in his boyfriend's house, Cronus took the opportunity to play Karkat's nintendo for the next 62 hours without pausing to sleep, eat, or go to the facilities. He collapsed into a crusty dehydrated manchild heap on the Vantas's carpet after beating all of Karkat's games. "Fuuuuuck..." He rasped, "I need a job... so I can... buy some new games..."

Just as Cronus creeped his shriveled and dessicated husk into the kitchen to get him some of that good wawa, Dr. Vantas (PHD) arrived home from her job 4 hours away in New York, exhaustedly dropping her extremely Christian leather purse containing copies of the bible in english, spanish, arabic, hindi and swahili on the table. The room immediately flooded with crosses, 23 appearing on the walls accompanied by painted wooden plaques bearing messages like 'in this family we PRAY and LOVE JESUS' and 'Live (forever in christ) laugh love'. Cronus shrugged with a hideous crackling noise due to his immense dehydration, and without even giving the busy woman a coffee break, immediately approached her for help. "Can you give me an iv?" He croaked. "I am severely dehydrated." He gestured fragilly to his entire body, then fainted on the kitchen floor. 

When he awoke, Dr Vantas (MD) was hovering over him with the angriest face he'd ever seen, his teeth awkwardly sharp looking and his thick curly hair twirled into two obvious horn shapes. "You passed out because you've been running up my electricity bill for the last three days, you delerious fuckwit! My wife is a psychiatrist, she doesn't even know how to give IVs, I'm the fucking trauma surgeon! Ask me next time you brainless twit!" Cronus looked down to see the IV in his arm, then back up at Dr Vantas (MD). "You didn't look for a job like you promised my daughter you would, so I'm taking you to work with me and we're paying you ten dollars an hour to help us hold fat people when we have to do surgeries or autopsies on them." As Dr Vantas (md) continued to speak, his irises burned with a red tone and the room around him grew darker, his teeth seemed sharper, shiny and white and thirsting for human flesh. He snarled, his voice demonic "You're gonna make some goddamn money if you're going to sit here and use my electricity wilted fuckboy." 

Dr. Vantas (PHD) ran into the room with a spraybottle labeled 'holy water' rapidly spritzing Dr. Vantas (MD) until his demonic features receeded. He hissed and batted his hands helplessly while he was bathed in holy water by his beautiful wife. 

"What the fuck, Mrs Vantas, why did you marry a demon?" Cronus asked innocently. 

Both Vantases turned to him slowly, hatred on their faces. "My wife didn't get a DOCTORATE for you to call her a missus!" Dr. Vantas (MD) hissed, the deep red glow of dying embers emanating from his eyes again. 

"You don't get to call my sweet sensitive Karam a demon! You don't get to call anyone in this house a demon! THIS IS A CHRISTIAN HOME!" She screeched in an otherworldly multitonal voice, flames rising off her body as her eyes glowed a firey orange and huge wings spread from her back. 

Karkat walked home from school and into the kitchen amidst the abyssal soundtrack of his aggravated parents and calmly pulled a microwave burrito from the freezer, popped a few holes in the over wrap and put it on defrost for 4 minutes and thirty seconds, then waddled over to the kitchen counter. With and flourish of his hand, he procured the spraybottle and spritzed both of his parents while politely but firmly repeating "no." The two hissed and returned to their regular human forms. 

"Am I on crazy pills?" Cronus asked the entire family. 

"Nope", Karkat replied. He gave himself a generous spritz and returned to stand in front of the microwave and wait for his burrito. 

The furious Vantas parents both continued to glower at him, seething with rage. "Uh so anyway who's this daughter I keep hearing about?" He asked. "You said I could only sleep in her room, but I couldn't find it so I just never went to sleep." 

"You were in her room the first night here, inattentive fuckboy! You slept with Kameela your first night, what do you mean you couldn't find her room?" Dr Vantas (MD) bellowed. 

Dr Vantas (PHD) turned the full force of her hatred onto her sweet and gentle husband, the force of her voice knocking him backward into the wall, cracking it both audibly and visibly. "HE CAME OUT TEN YEARS AGO! YOU HAVE HAD AMPLE TIME TO ADJUST! KANKRI IS OUR SON KARAM!" 

Dr. Vantas (MD) lifted himself several feet off the floor, thrumming with demonic energy, sprouting a defined pair of horns and a pointed tail. Claws spiked through his crocs and his sick demon muscles ripped his comfy sweater to shreds. "HE", he said with air quotes, "HAS TWO X CHROMOSOMES AND A UTERUS, KATHLEEN! MEN CAN'T MAKE BABIES!" 

The two doctors launched into a wild aerial dogfight, arguing the entire time about whether Kankri was a boy or a girl. Karkat shrugged and dragged Cronus outside by the hand, munching his hippy burrito. "Let's go to Jade's house until they stop." Cronus let the chonky little boy drag him outside just as the house combusted violently. The two turned and watched it for a moment. "Let's go to Jade's house", Karkat repeated.

The two of them crossed the backyard and climbed into the van, pulling it out of the pile of shit and garbage Cronus had hidden it under. It was time to go to Jade's house.


	4. Jade's house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains cucumber molestation, among other forms of plant based sexual harassment. That is not an entendre of any kind and is extremely literal. If you can't handle simulated nonconseneual sexual behavior with a cucumber or butternut squash, please do not read this chapter.

The van's balding tyres halfheartedly plucked at the gravel of the driveway at the Harley-English household out on the most rural edge of town. Vegetables could be seen growing for acres with chickens roaming among them, and Jake was outside running around all silly with his pistol out, giggling. 

"Kaaaarkat?" Cronus asked unsurely, "Kar? How do you even know these weird free range home school kids?" Cronus asked. 

"They came to the same bible study summer camp as us one (1) summer", Karkat responded. The second the van came to a halt, he flung the door open and sprinted to the house as fast as his chonky leggers could carry him. "JADE! JADE! MY PARENTS ARE HAVING A DEMON BATTLE AGAIN! THEY BURNT DOWN THE HOUSE!" Jake stopped in the field, putting his guns away, ceasing his silly merriment. Jade ran out toward Karkat, also hollering. 

"KARKAT! Karkat! I built a fence around the cucumbers so they won't scare you again! I've got a sleeping bag for you now!" The two of them hugged and ran off to frolick among the vegetables and farm supplies. 

"Why would cucumbers be scary?" Cronus wondered out loud just as Jake snuck up behind him, jamming his fingers into his kidneys and screaming. 

"GOOSE!" He yelled. 

"STOP GOOSING ME EVERY TIME YOU SEE ME YOU WEIRD HOME SCHOOL TWIRP!" Cronus squeaked. 

Ignoring his request, Jake took a cucumber from his pocket. " I'm gonna show you why cucumbers are scary for Karkat" He drawled. 

Cronus flinched and shivered, anticipating an extremely lewd act to follow, but Jake just slid the cucumber between Cronus's pecs repeatedly. "Oh, it's from that? I thought he was like a cat or something and they just freaked him out." 

Jake shook his head, then proceeded to start beating Cronus with the cucumber until it broke, drawing another one from his pocket immediately to replace it and resume the pummeling. Cronus started to run, but Jake was faster, his strong country legs toned from his entire childhood spent outside, free of the traditional education system with its entire days schedule of desk bound mathematical drudgery; and Cronus was weak- starved, dehydrated and deprived of sleep by his own idiot hand. Cronus continued to evade unsuccessfully, gasping and finally falling to his knees winded and covered in cucumber juice. Jake pulled his shirt over his head, sat on his belly, pushed his skinnyfat boy tiddies together and started rubbing the cucumber between them while Cronus wept from embarrassment and exhaustion. Jake laughed goofily the whole time like a demented Disney character. "That's why Karkat doesn't like cucumbers" He said, thinking he'd taught the dense boy a lesson. 

Cronus sat up, pulled down his shirt, and wiped his eyes with his arm. "When they broke did you keep them? If you've got yogurt we can make a sauce with em, they'll be good for it all broken up like that." 

Jake stared incredulously.

"Yeah I don't like wasting food. I can make the sauce, I promise, my Yaya showed me how. It's good on everything. Gimme the cucumbers, I'm really hungry I haven't ate for three days." 

Jake continued to stare as Cronus got up and followed the path their one sided fight had taken, gathering broken cucumbers off the ground. "It's cool, I'll rinse them off" He said. 

Jake stood and watched as he waddled away, slowly bringing his phone up from his pocket. "Jade?" He said, holding his thumb down to send the voice message, "I don't think Cronus understood the point of the whole thing you asked me to do with the cucumbers. I don't think he got it at all. I feel like it was a complete waste of time." 

On the other end of the farm, Jade and Karkat were having an amazing time riding an old washing machine together. Washing machine rodeo was one of their favorite dumb games to play in the farm's junkyard. Hearing the notification beep, Jade played Jake's sad message and she and Karkat hung their heads. The abnormal vegetarian picked her chin up and looked to Karkat with determination. "We're gonna have to try phase two." She pressed her button to record a voice message back to her brother. "Try it with the butternut squash. It's at least three times as phallic and significantly heavier." Karkat bit his lip uncomfortably. 

Cronus laid all his broken cucumbers in a colander and rinsed, then raided the cabinets and fridge for suitable materials, putting the kitchen into a state of disarray. With his attention on the task at hand, Jade and Karkat took their places in the window to watch what would come to pass in the kitchen. Jake walked up behind him silently, carrying the absolute biggest butternut squash from the root cellar. He took a deep breath and prepared himself mentally for what he was about to do, then quietly wiggled the butternut around Cronus's head and toward his mouth. "Uhhhhh..." He intoned, as Jake butted the thin end of the squash to his lips. "Why are you assaulting me with these vege-" He was cut off by Jake pushing the stem end of the squash into his mouth, then pulling it back and forth suggestively while wiggling his eyebrows and delivering unblinking eye contact. 

Cronus tried to move his head back, but Jake turned him around, pushed his butt onto the counter and kept shoving the squash in there. Cronus could only look surprised and mumble a bunch of meaningless muffled noise into the vegetable as Jake continued. Finally, he grabbed it with his hands and wrenched it away. "JAKE! For a vegetarian, you don't seem to know what vegetables are for. You're trying to feed me the stem end and it's not even cooked! The stem end is hard, Jake." Cronus glowered at him for a moment before he continued. "I appreciate you trying to feed me but I can do it myself, I'm a big boy." 

Jake turned to the window and shrugged. Jade and Karkat shrugged back. He turned back to Cronus. "Alright, so the plan was to sexually assault you with vegetables until you ran away, because we host the Vantas boys every time their parents get froggy with each other and won't quit hollerin', but you don't seem smart enough to understand it." 

"I understand that the vegetables are phallic Jake, I just don't find penetrating sexual acts humiliating regardless of whether I am on the giving or receiving end, because it's a lot of fun, a great time for me and everyone else. I'm gay and I like to suck dicks. Maybe you guys need to check your homophobia." 

All three of the teens stared at Cronus, at a loss for words. "Anyway I'm going to eat everything in your fridge with this sauce and then sleep on your couch for the next twelve to eighteen hours." He waddled to the fridge, and Karkat and Jade came inside. They all stared at each other with nothing to say.


	5. Cronus does his job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cronus finally goes to work and does his job!
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter inaccurately depicts a trauma surgery on a morbidly obese character. If you consider yourself to be more on the chonky side and feel crummy about that, this chapter may not be a good idea right now. Surgeries tend to be more complicated on obese patients, especially when their obesity is extreme, for numerous reasons involving not only the effect of the weight on their own body but also on the ease of access to the inside of said body due to the bulky and slippery fatty tissue, which is why Cronus is here to help by holding some of that tissue to let the surgeons operate.

After eating all of the food in the fridge, some of which was meat - wild game specifically- much to his surprise, Cronus passed out on the Harley/English family sofa for the next 48 hours. Jake, Jade and Karkat had fun times playing with the family gaming systems, taking turns stacking things on his slumbering face and teaching Karkat how to cook so he could stop eating microwavable curry and burritos for every meal. Just as they were about to call the ambulance for the apparent coma Cronus was enjoying, he jolted awake, checking his phone, which he hadn't done for five entire days. "SHIT", he exclaimed. There were 42 new messages from Kankri.

Cronus tapped the notification and saw the long stream of messages from the dude who's peepee he had recently touched.  
"Hey I'm stopping at taco bell on my way home, do you want anything?"  
"guess not, I got you a chalupa and empanadas in case you were busy with something."  
"Cronus? Where are you? I thought you were staying with us."  
"did you just leave?"  
"Is it because I let you put your hand in my underpants?"  
"I showed you my dong, please respond."  
"please tell me you're not answering because you are dead, and not because you hate my dong."  
"My parents burned the house down, are you OK?"  
"Cronus, are you dead? Did they burn the house down to hide your body? What did you do to anger my parents?"  
"if you're ghosting me because you didn't like my dong you're doing a terrible job, Cronus, because my brother keeps texting me shitty excuses about you being in a coma. Comas only happen in the movies, Cronus, they are not real. Stop making my brother tell me you're in a coma."  
"Ugh fine don't bother texting back, I understand you are transphobic and that this is about my dong."

Cronus released a long, ululating scream of terror as his eyes fixed on the word transphobic. Kankri hated people who were described with words ending in phobic, so this was one of the worst disasters that could befall him. As he continued to screech like an ambulance siren, the window filled with the message that he could no longer access this conversation on messenger because he was blocked. He loosed another, even more annoying scream. Jake inched toward his face with a wad of cotton balls, then in a swift and decisive motion slammed them all into his mouth to muffle the noise. The three children agreed that Cronus was definitely in some sort of traumatic medical distress, picked him up and loaded him into the back of his van with all his worldly possessions. Jade and Karkat took the passenger seats, and Jake drove them all to the emergency room. As they got there and dragged his writhing and stupid chronically dehydrated screaming carcass from the van, Dr. Vantas(MD) spotted him and exclaimed, "AH! Cronus! You're here! I thought you would never show up for work! Come in!" Dr. Vantas(MD) put his arm under Cronus's armpits and took him to the scrub room to get him ready to enter the surgical theater. 

Dr. Vantas(MD) began to wash and prep Cronus for surgery as he poked cotton balls out of his mouth with his tongue to resume screaming, something which the trauma surgeon would not abide. As the noise escaped his face, Dr. Vantas(MD) slapped him right across the mouth. "Cronus, stop. This is no place for your feelings." The stoic mandemon asserted. "We're going to do surgery, and you're going to help. Your feelings are for at home, or in the therapist's office. We're doctors. Well, I mean I am, I went to doctor school and have been assisting with surgeries since my brother got his foot blown off by a mine near my house when I was three and a half and I had to stem arterial bleeding and help sew the stump shut without anesthetic while my poor brother screamed, and you're some dumb dick my... ... son... appreciates for no fucking reason. I am going to pull bullets out of a fat person now, and I need you to hold her gigantic stomach paunch apart so I can reach those bullets. Scream afterward. You have nothing to scream about beforehand." Feeling he'd addressed whatever was going on, Dr. Vantas(MD) dragged a squeaky clean, gloved and masked Cronus into the operating theater, and proceeded to put his hands on either side of the numerous bulletwounds, which appeared to be about four. He immediately recognized the patient to be Mrs. Serket, his dumb little brother's stupid friend Vriska's mom who cheated on her husband with Mituna's horrible chubby-chaser dad. His attention snapped back to Dr. Vantas(MD), who was now holding some plier looking motherfuckers and giving Cronus an intense look. "I will need you to stick your fingers inside her so I can retrieve the bullet."

"How will that help?" Cronus asked. 

"It makes it so I can see the bullet." the doctor stated.

"But I'm gay", he replied.

Dr. Vantas sighed. "I don't understand why that would be a problem, please get your fingers in there and hold her open so I can get the bullet." 

Cronus nodded and let go of the wound, reaching for her pusspuss. 

"WHAT THE FUCK? NO!" Dr. Vantas guided his hands back to the wound, rolling her breast back and stomach down to reveal it again, and placed Cronus's hands back around it. "The fucking bullethole you dumb dick."

Cronus nodded and said "ahh", noticing that this interpretation of his statement made infinitely more sense. "That's way grosser than what I thought you wanted me to do." 

"It's necessary, Cronus. This woman has bullets inside her body. Please do your fucking job." 

Cronus cringed, digging his fingers along the bullethole shaft as best he could without just making new holes in the slippery, jiggly, formless fatty tissue, which immediately started seeping tons of blood because that's how fat be like when you squeeze it too much. Dr. Vantas congratulated him on finally not fucking something up, then dug out a bullet. As they moved on to the next, the pressure started to bother him. At the next, his weak little manbaby arms were jiggling with effort to hold the woman's fleshmass apart in order to aid the extraction- and by the fourth, he couldn't take it anymore. He began to emit a high-pitched, quittery whine like a spoiled child who has taken three whacks at the pinata at someone else's birthday already and has been asked to move along to let the other kids try by their least favorite adult. 

"Cronus, No!" Dr. Vantas asserted sternly. 

"Cronus yes!" Cronus whined, continuing the nasally, pitchy noise afterward. 

"Cronus, NO." He said again.

"Cronus yes!" he squealed, tears in his eyes as he let go of Mrs. Serket and hugged his own weak, shaky arms. The fat closed around Dr. Vantas(MD)'s plier looking motherfuckers and he hollered in anguish. 

"CRONUS! YOU OPEN THIS WOMAN'S FAT BACK UP SO I CAN REMOVE THE BULLET AND SAVE HER LIFE." 

"But it's hard!" Cronus whined. 

Dr. Vantas(MD) slapped him again. "You can't just stop doing something because it's too hard! If I gave up on trauma surgery just because too many of the idiots getting shot, stabbed, and blown apart with firecrackers are fat as fuck and it's hard to operate on them, people all over the great state of New Jersey would die. Stick your fingers back down that fucking bullet hole and hold the fat apart so I can find the fucking bullet you ponce."

Sobbing, Cronus dug his fingers back into the bullethole and weakly pushed the difficult tissue apart again so that Dr. Vantas(MD) could remove the bullet and address all the ruptured blood vessels it created on its way in there. With it out, he banished Cronus from the surgical chamber and proceeded to do all the other parts of the surgery. Cronus sat in the scrub room whining while more experienced surgeons and assistants around him yelled at him to clean his filthy bloodsoaked bacterial ass up in case they needed him for something else. Weeping, he cried to all the staff gathered in the room. "I got dumped! I got dumped right before work! He blocked me on the internet! I'm blocked!" he sobbed. 

"NO ONE CARES!" a surgeon screamed. 

"PEOPLE ARE DYING!" another hollered, pushing Cronus toward the sink, ripping his contaminated PPE off and and throwing his contaminated stuff into the medical waste bin.

Seven fat trauma patients that needed to be held open later, Cronus was released with Dr. Vantas(MD) to go home from his long day of surgeries. The two of them sat on the back staircase, looking exhaustedly toward the parking lot, as Dr. Vantas(MD) lit up a cigarette. "I'm really surprised you were so fucking bad at like, every single aspect of this job, Cronus. I at least expected the medical terminology would be somewhat sensible to a person from Greece, seeing as like all of it is just Greek words that rich and trendy English people played fuck fuck games with in the eighteenth century."

"What? I'm Italian like every other person in New Jersey", Cronus insisted.

"I know your dad personally, he frequently helps my patients unsuccessfully attempt to sue this hospital for stupid shit that's realistically their own fucking fault because they won't follow our postsurgical directions. You're Greek, you lived there until you were ten and you still have a slight accent."

"No I don't! I'm Italian like every other person in New Jersey!"

"I'm in New Jersey right now, and I'm not Italian. My beautiful wife is a Texan and she is here as well. Not everyone in New Jersey is Italian."

"Texas is America, it's not separate, she's just American American. I am an Italian American. I can make-a-spaghet. I can toss-a the pizza. I'll show you."

"Cronus, if anyone cared about white people at all, everything you just did would get you dragged on the internet until you killed yourself to escape the shame. You're Greek and it's not a problem, calm the fuck down."

"I told you I am Italian American just like everyone else in New Jersey."

Dr. Vantas shook his head, sighed, took a long drag off his cigarette, and drank a bunch of liquor from a secret flask in his pocket to handle the stress Cronus's bullshit was causing him. Cronus sat, repressing his memories as hard as he could, especially the one about the family trip that got him kicked out of the house being to Athens. He took Dr. Vantas(MD)s flask and drank the rest of it without permission. Dr. Vantas(MD) casually slapped him across the mouth again, but not very hard, because he didn't really care. "Either way, I think surgery might not be for you. Keep coming anyway, I won't have my ... ... son... dating a bum."

"You know, I thought it would be better if you acknowleged him, but pausing dramatically before and after you call him your son is not much better. It's obvious how you feel."

Dr. Vantas(MD) tried to get angry, but he just couldn't make himself care. Surgery was too hard, and he was very sleepy and bitchy and hungry and needed to nap nap. "Cronus, I need dumplings. Get your obnoxious posterior into the passenger seat of my car, remain calm and silent, and come get dumplings with me." Cronus nodded, and the two of them went to a middle eastern restaurant, where Dr. Vantas(MD) procured a fucking irresponsible amount of dumplings and carried them all to the car in a big box. The two of them drove back to the Vantas family home, which was mysteriously still there, where Dr. Vantas(MD) proceeded to set the six remaining styrofoam clamshell cases that had survived the car trip still full of dumplings as well as his half-finished one on the kitchen counter, throw his pants on the ground, and immediately start eating. Awakened by the smell of food that hadn't been microwaved, Kankri stumbled out of his room, digging his grubby fingers into one of the clamshell cases and pulling one straight through without opening it, sending shattered styrofoam showering everywhere. He crammed the rare actually cooked treat into his deprived piehole. Karkat cautiously entered, quickly snapping a box of dumplings away and eating them at the kitchen table so he'd be safely out of slapping radius. Dr. Vantas(MD) showed weak signs of territorial behavior, but ultimately didn't care enough to defend his late night treat. With only two boxes surviving the mass destruction at the Vantas household, everyone but Cronus went to sleep. 

"Fuck." Cronus said. "I still can't sleep here." He sat on the kitchen floor and began to wibble violently, pouting as hard as he possibly could until Kankri came out and put a blanket over his shoulders and lead him back to his room to sleep. "What?" he asked. Kankri said nothing, too tired from eating a fuckload of food in a sitting. "Wow, everything went better than expected." he said.


	6. Amateur Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the advice of Tumblr.com, Kankri does amateur therapy on his boyfriend. 
> 
> The therapy being depicted in this chapter will not be helpful, based in understanding of mental health, or even a particularly accurate representation of how therapy works. If you don't know anything about how therapy or mental illness works, please do not assume you know anything about it after reading this chapter, because you are exactly as ignorant as you were before but slightly more amused. If therapy being misrepresented for story purposes will bother you beyond the point of being able to enjoy the story, please avoid this chapter. 
> 
> This chapter also contains some bodyshaming, specifically directed at Eridan by Cronus. If you're fat and not OK with that, this chapter will not help.
> 
> This chapter mentions incest. 
> 
> Furthermore, the depiction of Cronus and Kankri's relationship is about to take a turn toward "not well adjusted or healthy". Please be aware of that. I mean, to be fair, this entire work of fiction is crude, lewd, and socially undesirable by design, but I try my best to point out the worst parts in advance so people can olly outy if it's not a good chapter for them.

Cronus awakened to the sight of Kankri at the end of his awesome wonderwoman bed watching him with concern. "Cronus, you sleep a lot. Is this normal for you?"

Cronus shook his head. Of all the things his parents had complained about for his entire life, sleeping too long on a daily basis was not on the list. 

"Considering your actions over the past few days, and also throughout your entire life, I'm somewhat concerned about your mental health. That is to say, I probably would have cared before if I was a better friend, but I started recently because we entered into a physical relationship."

Cronus nodded again, immediately repressing the memory of being told that Kankri had spent most of their interactions not caring about his health and wellbeing and the part where he said physical instead of romantic. "Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely a mess, just like everyone else in the great state of New Jersey."

"Yeah, see, you're more of a mess than usual. Like, I'd take you to a therapist, but I don't think you can afford it and I don't know if your parents threw you off their health insurance plan when they asked you to leave the house. Anyway, I've been reading a lot about therapy, mostly to help me with issues from my own childhood because while my father is very ignorant, I understand we were not raised in the same culture and this is probably quite trying for him so despite his utter failure as a human being and a father I still love him very much." Cronus nodded again, but Kankri continued before he could say anything. "So I want to try some therapy to work out why you're such a squirrely, barely functional mess of a man so we can fix you and I won't have to be embarrassed that I want to have sex with you."

Cronus nodded excitedly, selectively hearing that Kankri wanted to have sex with him and almost nothing else he had said. "I am happy to inform you that while I have had a series of self-caused medical difficulties in the last couple of days, Kankri, my wiener still works. It works real good. It is working right now."

Kankri sighed. "Alright, we're going to try talking about your childhood."

"I'm not sure why that's relevant to us performing the horizontal waltz but aight let's talk about my childhood."

Kankri sighed again, his face falling into his palm with an audible smack.

"It's lucky your hand was there to catch, or you'd already be sucking my dong right now. Let's go!" Cronus said joyfully. 

"Alright, uh... Cronus. Did your parents ever do anything... that made you feel sad or uncomfortable?" Kankri asked. 

Cronus thought as hard as he could, he thought and he thought and tried as hard as he could to remember, but something made him mega uncomfortable so his brain dumped the entire train of thought. "Wow, I'm sorry", Cronus said. "I forgot what we were talking about, do we have some hummus here though? I would really like some hummus and stuff to dip in said hummus as a snack currently and have no idea why. Must need those essential chickpea and tahini nutrients to make my brain work." he tapped his forefinger to his head twice and did a double gun fingers at Kankri, who was unamused.

"We can have snacks after the therapy. Let's try again, but differently. Cronus, can you remember anything from your childhood that still bothers you today?" Kankri said, his face having long since removed itself from his palm as he watched Cronus stroke out instead of remembering something for fifteen entire minutes. His fingers now rested in the traditional thinking face emoji position on his chin. 

"UUUUHHHHH..." Cronus monotoned, stroking out hard for a second time as the second his brain touched a bad memory it shrieked and pulled its metaphorical finger away from the owie spot and gave it kisses and bandaids to make it feel better. "Nope! I was a happy little boy with a normal home. It must be something else."

Kankri's thinking face intensified, and he walked to his laptop, sitting open on the desk for homework. He tabbed out and began searching the web.

"This isn't what I expected to happen when you said you wanted to have sex with me", Cronus asserted, hopping off the bed and walking to the kitchen to search for snacks. He opened the refrigerator half of the standing side-by-side fridge and freezer appliance, inspecting the emptiness within and finding only some milk, a brita filter with some frosty wawa, a couple red and white onions, a jar of pickles, and the dumplings from yesterday. He went to the freezer side and found a mountain of curry and burrito meals. He turned toward the living room, where Karkat was disdainfully deleting all of Cronus's save files saved over all his own game progress with a sense of defeat and loss. "Karkat? Karrr? Karkat? Bro, you've got to have other food."

"NO, WE DO NOT HAVE OTHER FOOD." Karkat responded firmly. 

"Not even like a lonely package of ramen noodles under the sink? Where's your pantry?"

Karkat entered the kitchen and gestured to the pantry like Vannah White. He slid open the door and gestured to their foods- some whole wheat pasta noodles, a couple jars of red sauce, a load of both red and white quinoas as well as a metric fucking ass ton of rice, mostly brown but with some jasmine and basmati varieties thrown in for variety. "UHHHHH..." Cronus intoned. He waddled between the fridge and the pantry a few times. "I know you guys aren't vegans, those dumplings had meat in them. There isn't stuff you can make a meal with here. Are your parents grocery shopping? Karkat? Kar? Karkat?!"

Karkat palmed his face. "No Cronus, our parents are not grocery shopping. Our parents are busy doctors and don't have time to cook. We live off microwave food and the occasional takeout."

"Oh. is that why you're both chunky little fatties with boy tiddies?" 

Karkat screeched in frustration, his head tilted back and arms out as he looked to God for an answer on why Cronus was so fucking dumb. "Cronus, I don't know what happened that took all your social graces away and hid them under a shrub in the woods, but that's not a polite question to ask anyone. God help you if you mention Kankri's tits to Kankri, just don't bring that up, and never look at, touch, talk about, or even allow my chunky little boy tits to ever cross your mind again."

"Kanrki doesn't like his tits. Noted. Thanks."

"If that's all you got out of that, it was more than I imagined, even in my wildest dreams. Thank you for confirming to me that you're not some medically mysterious functional braindead person, walking and talking and interacting with your surroundings without the firing of a single neuron, and going so far as to leave me with the impression you have the capacity to learn. I'm glad my brother isn't banging an actual zombie; however, if any of your parts start to look decayed, or god help us, fall off, please let him know immediately so he can stop and get tested. I don't want him to have corpse diseases in addition to terrible judgement."

Cronus smiled and gave the kid a thumbs up. "Glad to help!" he said. He elected to make a burrito, leaving the dumplings for Kankri and his brother so they could enjoy the taste of real food for a couple meals. He wiggled his way back over to Kankri's room, trying his best to enjoy the chewy and beany burrito with its tangy vegan cheese despite its dry, microwaved properties and bagged flavor. When he opened the door, Kankri held up several hastily made sock puppets, all of which resembled members of his own family. The daddy sock had a horrifying face drawn onto it, the mommy sock looked like a complete pushover who would literally do whatever she was told no matter who told it to her, the little brother sock looked like a fucking brat, and the happy little cronus sock seemed peaceful and apathetic, like a lobotomy survivor.

"Wow are those my socks?" Cronus asked immediately.

"No, they were my old socks, I have no idea how you mixed that up at all, they're pretty small. Anyway, I figured we can try puppet therapy, like they do on kids, since you're clearly not able to talk about your experiences for some reason." Kankri held up the socks, wiggling them excitedly. "If we don't have enough puppets, we can make more." 

Cronus nodded and sat down criss cross applesauce on Kankri's bed, finishing his last crunchy little burrito edge, scorched beyond its creator's expectations by a combination of freezerburn and microwaving. Cronus swallowed the lump without complaint. He would not admit it, but he fucking hated it. "Alright, let's play with some socks. I didn't know we were into feet."

"We're not! let's continue." Kankri sat on the bed beside him, laying out some glitter glue, sharpies, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. He selected the little Cronus sock, and put it over his hand. "Cronus, can you show me how the other members of the family treat this dude? He's uh... his name is... Gronus, and he's an immigrant from... Creece. He's a normal boy and he goes to school, but he sometimes has uh... outbursts." Cronus nodded. 

"That's my puppet. that's me, you just changed the letters." 

"No, it's a different boy. It's Gronus."

"What kinds of outbursts does he have?"

"He has this friend... uh... Mankri? and his little brother, Markat. And he raped Markat's tiddiebreass with a cucumber once because he wouldn't let him use his nintendo. First Markat asked him to stop, then Mankri told him to stop, and Mankri's mom told him to stop or she'd call the police, but he didn't listen so he got kicked out of the house."

Cronus laughed. "Hahahaha! Yeah, that puppet is me."

"No, he's different, because Gronus is from Creece. He's a Creek boy."

"Yeah, no, I'm Italian American like everyone else in New Jersey. You're right, that puppet's not me."

Kankri sighed deeply much like his father had the day before. Unlike his father, he had seen Cronus's steady descent into complete and utter denial and his refashioning of himself into a Danny Zuko lookalike, so he wasn't as surprised though he was equally disappointed. "Yeah, see? He's not you, but he's coming home from school now", Kankri said, putting a little pipecleaner backpack on the sock, then wiggling it playfully to emulate walking. "So what is his family doing?"

Cronus put the mom and little brother puppets on his hands, then started to wave them at eachother to emulate a conversation. "Wow!" the mom puppet said, "Geridan! you do so well at school unlike your idiot brother Gronus. I'm going to frame you and put you on the fridge even though you're way too fat to stick because you eat hot pockets all fucking day and won't play sports! I'm so proud of you, second and better boychild who was not a drunken mistake." the mom puppet picked the little brother puppet against the wall and stuck him there. Cronus then slid his hand down the wall and made a squeaking noise to emulate that he was way too fat to stick and would indeed slide all the way to the floor. 

Kankri holds out his hand. "Alright, let's stop. I need some backstory. Why doesn't Gronus do well at school?"

Cronus rolled his eyes and answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Well, unlike Geridan, Gronus grew up only speaking Creek until he was in like sixth grade? Then suddenly he had to go learn algebra and shit in Menglish right after he moved away from all his friends, and he was smart enough to struggle through without getting held back, obviously, because Gronus is an actual genius with a tested IQ of 164, but he never caught back up from the lessons he missed because of the language barrier and sortof stopped caring about school and just focused on making friends and playing football. Except there was a huge misunderstanding about what football is, so he got tackled BY A HUGE TERRIFYING SENIOR once and then cried because he didn't know he was going to rugby practice and expected what you Mamericans call 'soccer' and became a social pariah because boys aren't allowed to have emotions in Mamerica." Kankri nodded at the insight, gesturing for him to continue. "Yeah but now he's the token gay kid on the varsity soccer team and almost about to walk across the stage at graduation right on time! hooray! Who's the fucking idiot now, mom? I LEARNED ENGLISH FAST ENOUGH NOT TO GET HELD BACK AND YOU STILL NEED HELP AT THE DMV!" he threw the mother puppet onto the bed and started flipping it off with both hands, even though one of them was still inside the Geridan puppet. Kankri nodded and recorded his observations in his notebook.

"Alright, Can I see them interact with Gronus now?" Kankri asked.

"Naw, I think you got the general idea." He nodded with a placid expression. 

"Can we see Gronus interact with Geridan, at least?" he pleased.

Cronus nodded, quickly drawing a crude ass on the back side of the Geridan puppet and making him a pair of pants by cutting another sock in half. He proceeded to give Geridan some little arms with pipe cleaners. "I'm ready. Bring me the Gronus." 

Kankri proceeded to bring him the Gronus, making a little squeaky noise to emulate an unlubricated door hinge. "I'm home!" he announced happily.

"Woah, real quick critique, stop. Gronus doesn't tell people when he comes home, he comes home really late when the streetlights are on and sneaks directly to the basement if his dad's car is in the driveway, and it prettymuch always is since he quit his old law firm and decided to freelance. Anyway, let's continue." he wiggled the Geridan puppet toward the Gronus puppet, the little pipecleaner hands holding the second sock up. "Hello large brother", he sneered in his best little boy voice. "Would you like to know of the things I have accomplished in Schule today?" Kankri attempted to respond with the Gronus puppet, only to discover Cronus had somehow gotten his hand inside and taken it without alerting him to the action. "Uh wow", he said in his own voice, "No, I really do not! I want to go downstairs and troll people on facebook with political arguments that are just barely not too stupid to be believed as an actual position real Americans hold. I don't want to hear about your chemistry test AT ALL." the Geridan puppet jiggled with rage, and Cronus accentuated with action with Yosemity Sam type anger mumbles. he continued in the small boy voice. "THE JOKE WAS THAT I GOT AN A! I WAS GONNA SAY I GOT AN A AND ASK IF YOU WANTED TO SEE IT, THEN WHEN YOU SAID YES I WAS GONNA PULL DOWN MY PANTS AND SHOW YOU MY ASSHOLE! BECAUSE IT'S MY A! YOU'RE THE WORST BROTHER I'VE EVER HAD!" The Geridan puppet pulled down its pants and mooned Cronus anyway, but while making sobbing sounds. He then jiggled it away rapidly in an upward pattern, to indicate it returning to its room upstairs. "You can't do the same prank twice and expect it to work, Geridan!" the Gronus puppet called after it. 

Kankri nodded, writing in his notebook. "Alright, can Gronus interact with some more of his family? Can we make a Gaya puppet? It seems like your Grandma is always home." Cronus nodded, proceeding to make a little puppet to resemble his Yaya, arming it with a bunch of little vegetables made from torn up post it notes. He approached the Gronus puppet with Gaya, insisting "Gronus. Eat Vegetable! For sports!" The Gronus puppet refused. "Gaya, I'm a growing boy, I need meat. I need beef, Gaya, I need Iron." "Gronus, Spinac!" the Gaya offered. Gronus accepted the Gaya puppet's salad, but Cronus explained that he took it to the kitchen and turned it into a big sloppy hamburger. the Gaya puppet proceeded into the kitchen and made noises of disdain, then rambled disappointedly in Creek. 

"She's saying I'm going to get fat if I keep acting like vegetables still count if I put them on hamburgers and pizza", he said after a few minutes. Kankri nodded again, while Cronus continued to interact the puppets somewhat lovingly for a few more minutes with tears in his eyes.

"Do you miss your Yaya?" Kankri asked. 

"Naw, I'm just really touched that Gronus's Gaya loves him so much, what a good wholesome family. She's a perfect Gaya, just the best. My Yaya hits me with potatoes when I get bad grades."

"Does she also grow you fresh vegetables to eat, give you big hugs and get disappointed with your hamburger habits?" Kankri asked. 

"I mean, Yes, but I hardly see how that's the same." Cronus said, following the statement with a puff of air to indicate he did not feel the things were related. This stopped his tears.

"Does Gaya hit Gronus with potatoes when he has bad grades?" Kankri asked.

"Of course?! What Yaya doesn't, that's part of the job. It's like you don't have a Yaya of your own, my dude." He rolled his eyes again, that was just the basics of what Yayas are like.

Kankri recorded this in his notebook. "Alright, Let's see the dad puppet. What does he do?" 

Cronus looked with terror to the sock with a scary face drawn on it. "Nah man, I'm good."

"It's for therapy. Please use the dad puppet. I copied his face from a meme."

Cronus gingerly lifted the father sock, putting it over his hand and facing it away from himself. "Kankri, I can't, this is the meanest puppet that ever lived. It's gonna be a dick to the rest of the little puppet family and I don't wanna do that to them." He wibbled his lip, then remembered Kankri saw him as sexy and not pathetic. He adjusted his positioning to present the best angle of his face, letting a sexy curl fall forward from his unstyled sleepytime morning hair and then resumed pouting and wibbling at Kankri to try to get out of the therapy. 

"Cronus, please. If you use the dad puppet, I'll find out so much more stuff and then I might actually be able to tell people that I touch you." Kankri wibbled in response, trying to look as cute and persuasive as possible.

Cronus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He knew what he must do. He straightened himself, then pulled the dad puppet down over his tightly balled fist. He proceeded to march it around, screaming at the other puppets about its legal cases, punching things, and happily eating scary imported mystery meats from the deep freeze that he explained were wild game he hunted and that he wanted to eat it all himself. He told the rest of the family not to have it, but Geridan stole some and ran off to eat it in the closet under the staircase like a little mouse because he's fat, not just in a physical way, but deep in his soul; he just loves to eat and doesn't care what happens as a result. Cronus continued to berate his brother's fatness.

"Have you ever thought he might have an emotional eating problem?" Kankri asked, stopping the tirade.

"Uhhh... no? What does Geridan have to be emotional about? He's the favorite, he's not a mistake they made at a party who forced them to get married so my parents love the little dude. I mean, Gronus's parents, because these dolls in no way reflect my family structure." Cronus nodded decisively.

"I think he has a problem. I'll talk to him." Kankri said.

"His problem is that he thinks everything tastes good." Cronus essentially repeated. 

Kankri nodded. "Alright, so, let's pretend all these puppets just got back from Athens. What happened there?"

Cronus's pupils narrowed and he struggled to breathe. "Uhhhh.... uhh? UH!" he said. 

"Please tell me." 

"Well uh, they, uh, they wanted to go see some family?" he said unsurely, "And uh, Gronus decided he was grown and he'd go clubbing, and while he was out he met this really fly lady there, who had a weenie? That was mega fun, Gronus didn't think he'd meet a real live weenie lady who didn't just immediately yell at him because her life is too hard, and weenie ladies are dope, you get all the fun of ladies and weenies at the same time, my man. Do reccomend! Anyway, it turned out she was his cousin, and that the rest of the family had been somehow mislead that she was a regular boy rather than an awesome weenie lady. Honestly, I don't see how people get that confused, the difference is obvious and clear. But, uh... it ruined the family vacation that he was having such bomb ass interactions with this weenie lady in the family home. And that she was his cousin. And that this is how her parents found out she was not a dude, which I mean is really not my fucking fault. Anyway, the Mamerican branch of the Gampora family is no longer welcome to visit the Creek division."

"So we're glossing over that you fucked your cousin?"

"Yes." Cronus stated firmly.

"Are we talking like a cousin, or like a second or third cousin."

"Oh, a first cousin, so not that bad, not a cousin cousin. You know, you've got your cousins, and your first cousins..." he said, counting on his fingers as if those were not the same thing.

Kankri took a deep breath, holding his head with his hands. "Did you know she was your cousin?"

"nope!" Cronus said. 

"Would you have done it if you did?"

Cronus bit his lip, thinking really hard about the event. "Yep!" he said just as readily.

Kankri stared.

"It's not like we knew eachother, she was just a hot stranger to me." he said in self defense. 

Kankri blinked. "Alright, it seems like we've really got it cooking here. I ordered you a new puppet. It's special, and it's gonna be here in a few days. It comes with a diary. Will you keep doing puppet therapy with me?"

"Will you keep being a bitch about me accidentally fucking my cousin?" he asked.

"No." Kankri stated. 

"Alright then! More puppet therapy for me!"


	7. KankriQuest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ES KANGRI. E QUESS!
> 
> TW: icky discussion of mental illness.
> 
> TW: Dave says things about his grasp on reality that may mess with you. If you're struggling with that currently, please abstain.
> 
> TW: some discussion of race.

Kankri sat down in starbucks with his chai latte, taking a sip with a sense of smug satisfaction. "Ahh, hello readers!" he said with a lot of confidence, "I bet you thought this whole story was going to be primarily from Cronus's point of view, or at least feature him primarily. I bet you didn't think I was going to be a main character, and yet! Here we are- me, the main character for an unknown number of chapters, and you, the reader, hearing about my tales. Yes, prepare yourself, because this is one of those books, with multiple character perspectives, and one of them is going to be mine. Some narrators, I'll have you know, are much more reliable than others. I'm among the more reliable, of course. I'm very well grounded in reality and relatively free of traumas and mental illness compared to many, though that does not effect their value as story characters and it'd be extremely rude to think that it did." He winked and nodded a bit to his right at the same time, his huge, tightly coiled manbun bobbing atop his head with the exaggerated gesture. "Today I'm going to meet another character you probably never expected to see, because he's not on the roster or any of the ships. It's Dave. He has some problems. Let's check them out." With another wink, Kankri proceeded to ignore the reader again, as if you'd never been in the scene with him smelling all the burnt flavored coffee aroma hanging in the air or seen the festive banners hung to announce the spring sale at the attached book store. Dave entered through the bookstore door, his hoodie drawn up and his sunglasses hiding his creepy, squirrely gaze. Both of his hands were tucked into the bulging pocket, which definitely had something inside. He immediately identified Kankri and sauntered to the table at which he sat on a very indirect route, slam dunking himself into the chair with an alarming volume. 

"Oh, hey, Kankri. Didn't see you there, what's up, dog?" he asked, trying to act casual and if he hadn't agreed to a weird coffee date style meeting at the local mall's book shop to discuss his very serious issue.

With another quick, knowing wink at the reader that made his manbun bounce, Kankri gave Dave a sympathetic look. "Alright buddy, you're kindof drawing attention to us. Just get out your notebook and we can start talking about what's going on that's got you feeling like you might need therapeutic intervention."

"Thanks, I figured you'd be reasonable and not call the cops since I heard you actually let Cronus go to your own personal house where you live and sleep instead of calling the police on him." Dave reached into his hoodie pocket and yanked out his notebook in a jerky motion, immediately slamming it on the table, somehow already in an open position. "I've been having recurring dreams and thoughts about us all playing some kind of video game together in an alternate universe that is no longer our own, it's pretty nutso, but it seems real. Since I started dream journaling, I've been having thoughts about it during the daytime too, It's got its own entire set of rules that all come together very coherently, but are also like made up of every common game from western Europe and the Greek zodiac. Anyway, I'm convinced it's maladaptive daydreaming or something even wronger and more vile because it seems too shitfuck stupid weird to be remotely true and makes me want to do things I know are a terrible idea. Anyway, I'm going to go get a huge chocolate coffee that my mom wouldn't usually let me have then shoplift a bunch of magic treehouse books and hip-hop CDs while you read that. I'll be back in an hour." Before Kankri could say anything about how shoplifting was impolite and a bad idea and that as an albino he wouldn't blend into any crowd with any kind of ease and should probably give up on stealing alltogether since he was highly identifiable, or that maybe he should move on from magic treehouse books as by 14 years of age he'd already undoubtedly gotten good enough at reading to enjoy books that weren't targeted at gradeschoolers, Dave was already gone, ordering his coffee so he could enjoy it while he crammed a copy of 'Kids See Ghosts' down his pants. 

Kankri approached the front counter, whipping out his sick 'son of two doctors' allowance to show that he had fat stacks of cash, and whispered to the cashier. "Hey, there's a kid in here who's going to try to shoplift, and you're definitely going to notice him, especially because I told you. I'm going to pay for all the stuff he steals, please promise me you'll still let LP scare the unholy shit out of him but don't actually call the cops." The cashier nodded, waving over the LP agent so she could get on the same page. They witnessed Kankri's fat cash money wad and nodded in agreement that all of this would come to pass. Satisfied, Kankri was able to return to the table and read Dave's creepy notebooks full of secrets, which contained the entire webcomic experience of homestuck in an analogue format, with the animated sequences and minigames contained in a couple of really dope high effort flipbooks and choose your own adventure segments. It took much longer than an hour to read. 

Finally, Dave nudged Kankri's shoudler a little bit. "Hey. Hey buddy, It's dark out, they're closing the store soon. I've had five mocha lattes with double shots of espresso, I've got all the shit I wanted. What's up man did you figure out whether I'm OK or need to be sent to the coocoo clinic?" Dave said, vibrating rapidly. 

Kankri looked up. "Oh, LP didn't catch you stealing all that shit?"

"Nope!" Dave said triumphantly. Kankri blinked a few times, then immediately flipped through the cascade flipbook again. 

"Wait, there's music, stop!" he said, yanking out his phone without knocking any of his stolen goods out of his pockets somehow. He hit play on the relevant track and made Kankri use all the flipbooks again, but this time with music he mixed at home. "It's better!"

"Why is there music?" Kankri asked.

"Because. There's supposed to be music." Dave said with a shrug. "I stole fruityloops studio to make it, is it good?" Kankri nodded and said yes even though he didn't really like it. 

The two of them were interrupted as the LP agent dragged Gamzee over to the two of them, the tiny brown boy crying fat tears of embarrassment. He greeted his acquaintances with a soft, depressed "honk".

"Is this the shoplifter you were warning me about? I caught him stealing a bagel from the starbucks." she announced. Dave and Kankri looked at eachother, Kankri looked at Gamzee, Gamzee looked at the floor. Dave looked at the LP agent's cleavage, but no one could tell because he was wearing sunglasses. 

"Yes." Kankri announced, handing her $12.99 for the fancy bagel. "Gamzee, don't steal again. Stay with us, alright?" Gamzee nodded, honking a soft sob, and Kankri got a chair for him. "We've got an eye on him, Ma'am. You don't have to worry anymore." She nodded and left. 

Kankri immediately wrapped his hoodie around Gamzee and gave him a hug. "I didn't tell on you, I thought she was going to catch Dave." he explained. 

Dave shrugged, he was completely used to getting away with whatever the fuck he wanted no matter what he actually did, and today was just another day for him. "I'll give you tips for next time", he offered.

"I'm just hungry!" Gamzee nearly screamed, his emotions running high. "I'm really hungry! Payday isn't for another week, we've got three onions and a ramen noodle cup in the house to eat!" he sobbed. Kankri rubbed his shoulders, shooshing him. 

"Let's go get dinner then, you think I can't steal from a mall taco bell? I can steal from a mall taco bell. Watch me." Dave said. 

Gamzee wept oppressed tears against Kankri's squooshy chonkyboy chest as he attempted to keep him from fighting Dave for being a living avatar of white privilege and ending up in Jail. "Shhhhh... Shh..." he said, papping him gently over and over, the way one might pap a baby. "Dave, get your shit and get out, I'll talk to you about this on the phone." Kankri said. 

"No man, the government taps the phones, we got to do it on the dark web if we don't do it here, and I'd rather do it here. You wanna get into bitcoin? I've got bitcoin." Dave said. "Let's just do it here."

Kankri took a deep breath, then looked up at one of the cameras in the attached book store. "Uhhh, I mean, the government is everywhere, Dave. They probably already zoomed in on your books while I was reading them in here. Let's uh... do it on... a secure app later. Fuck, let's just use discord. Is discord obscure enough to make you feel safe?" he asked.

"Can I come to your house, since they're already on to us?" Dave asked.

Kankri said 'fuck' internally, he had intended to take Gamzee home to partake of his microwave curry and burritos and talk to him about his experience with LP and be away from Dave to prevent him from provoking Gamzee into an aggravated assault. "Uhh... sure. But first, please go buy us some Taco Bell. Gamzee is very hungry. I'll move all this stuff to the food court." he said. 

Dave nodded. "I'll definitely 'buy' us some taco bell", he said, using air quotes when he mentioned purchase. 

"My brother's hungry", Gamzee cried. 

"I'll buy him some too", Dave said, still using air quotes. 

"My momma's hungry! She's really hungry! She works hard for us!" he cried, realizing Dave loved to steal, would absolutely love stealing a lot more stuff than anyone needed, and he could get some fucking good out of it. 

"I'll buy taco bell for everyone." Dave said, the air quotes remaining.

"Honk." the boy sniffed. Everyone acknowledged this meant thank you.

Dave walked away to commence the stealing. Kankri continued to comfort Gamzee, who was now honestly much better but liked the platonic affection and didn't want it to stop, though he kinda wished it could be his best buddy Karkat instead of his rude and stinky big brother. "Gamzee, why were you even at the mall if you don't have any money?" Kankri asked. 

"Honk." Gamzee said with a frown.

"That's not a real answer." Kankri said, his voice a bit critical. 

"I wanted to see Tavros, he likes to hang out here because it's got AC and heat so the weather doesn't get to him and is 100% wheelchair accessible so the stairs also don't get to him." Gamzee lied. He had legitimately come here to steal a variety of tasty foods and hide them in his room so his momma wouldn't find out and whoop his ass for stealing and being a bad boy even though he kinda needed to do it or he'd be really fucking hungry until they served lunch at school the next day.

Kankri nodded, that made perfect sense. Tavros was somewhat of a wimpy baby and would complain indefinitely about the temperature outside regardless of the season, so he would want to hang out in a mall over anywhere else he could possibly choose to go. 

"Well, I'm sorry you didn't find him before Dave's antics and my response to them got you caught trying to scrounge up a bagel. You'll get better food now, so everything worked out. I can help you find him so you guys can figure somewhere else to go, it might not be a good idea to hang around this mall after you've already run into LP." Kankri offered.

Gamzee swallowed hard. "No, that's OK. I already texted him that we shouldn't be here for a few weeks because I got in trouble."

Kankri bought it again, nodding, his man bun doing a happy bounce. "Alright, I'm sorry you had to cancel your plans. Well, at the very least I can escort you home."

"no need!" Gamzee said, waving his hand. He really didn't want anyone from school to come to his house, least of all the Social Justice Man, because he'd probably never shut up about it if he did. "I'm a big boy, I can take my food home. Tavros and Rufioh are definitely already going to be around there waiting for me since I couldn't be at the mall, so I'll be safe." he lied. "Honk", he added, to sound casual and relaxed even though he wasn't. 

Dave returned to the two of them, wearing a huge new backpack from the attached Walmart and carrying two small taco bell bags. "Gamzee, here. I got you some motherfucking food, the faygos, an entire key lime pie since you always seem to be eating that, some boots, an umbrella and a raincoat. Why? Because it was there, so I stole it. That's why, because Dave Strider can steal anything." he said, posing with pride. 

"Honk!" he said instead of wow. "HONK!" he said louder and with excitement instead of thank you. He gratefully took all the shit Dave stole and got ready for the walk home, looking into the bag of walmart grocery items and stolen taco bell with big, sparkly eyes full of happiness. "Thanks Dave!" he said instead of honk, to make sure his gratitude was known. He immediately absconded before LP could see him with all his new shit.

Kankri watched him leave with an air of concern, and considered calling an escort to make sure the boy got home safely, but them returned to dealing with Dave's bullshit. "Alright, so, I read all your uh... wonderful works of fiction, and I don't think anything is wrong with you. In fact, I think you'd make an excellent author, and this is your authorial awakening, your great call to the world of writing."

"I'm not convinced it's fake", Dave said. "Something about it seems... like maybe it really happened. It feels like a long time ago. But I mean, can you really remember your childhood? Like, I read somewhere, some girl suffered a lot of childhood trauma because she had a narcissistic mom, and her mom would convince her she did stuff that she actually hadn't and would just yell and yell at her until she had a whole fake memory of herself doing it; but then, when she got older, she realized she could tell the difference between real memories and fake memories because in the fake ones she could see her own body like she was somebody else watching herself, and that's what all my memories of my childhood are like. But when I think about this big story I wrote, Kankri, I am actually there, like I can only see my hands, as the eyeball intended. You know, like a real memory."

Kankri listened to the conspiracy theories with care, trying hard not to immediately decide that Dave was completely insane. "Well, it's possible you had a trauma too, Dave. We could get you a Repressed Memory Emilio and his accompanying diary like I did for Cronus, since he seems to be struggling too. I can pull up the link from my Amazon cart and send it to you- You can even get his sister instead, the original Repressed Memory Emily, if you feel more comfortable identifying with a female toy. I've been looking at all kinds of therapeutic options for trauma recovery, so I can offer tips if Emily or Emilio help you discover the root of your internal strife."

Dave sighed. "I mean, I just, there's about uh... thirty of us or something? Who I want like 100% of to talk to me about their memories, so I can see if we're all like that, if all of us have fake memories where we can see our bodies like we were watching ourselves. I think most of us probably do."

"I don't think it matters." Kankri asserted. "I'm pretty sure this entire world is real and we've all lived in it the entire time."

"I thought so too, until I started dreaming." Dave said with mild aggitation.

"You mean until you started reading a lot of creepypasta and going on /x/? Your browser history hygiene skills are not up to par with someone who's visiting onion sites and has a bitcoin wallet, Dirk has been complaining." Kankri said with equal aggitation, only really looking at Dave through one half-open eye. 

"Kankri, please. I'm serious. I trusted you. Please at least think about it a little bit." Dave pleaded. 

"OK." Kankri lied. "I'll think about it and we can meet here and talk again in a couple days." he dishonestly promised. He'd really already made up his mind that the boy was extremely creative but taking it a little far, but he could still be polite to Dave.

"Alright, sweet." Dave said, handing Kankri a huge, heavy bag of taco bell. "I got some for Karkat and Cronus too, and I threw in two diet Pepsis from walmart."

"Why diet?" Kankri asked, jiggling slightly with anger at the assumption he'd be interested in diet products even though he actually was. 

"Karkat keeps complaining about being fat." Dave said without the tiniest hint of regret. "He's been asking Jade to help him eat healthier at school. She slaps him in the face every time he tries to pick up a french fry."

Kankri nodded, satisfied with the answer. "I'll make a note of that the next time we go shopping", he said, as if that would at all impact his parents' frantic race to shove a bunch of convenience food into the cart and get home to use their meager relaxation time to relax from their stressful jobs. the two of them shook hands and went their separate ways. Dave jumped onto a skateboard despite the rainy evening, his stolen goods clattering inside his baggy attire, and Kankri did a noncommittal walking jog to get to his car a little faster. 

He drove home intending to put the whole thing aside, but he couldn't help but realize Dave was right. In every memory he had before he was thirteen or fourteen, he could see himself as if he was watching from outside.


	8. Cronus is a racist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Kankri's grasp on reality is in question. If you're struggling with yours and think media discussing such could fuck with you right now, please avoid.
> 
> TW: Cronus is a racist.
> 
> TW: some discussion of Kankri's memories, which involve gender dysphoria, racism, and islamophobia. I tried to leave as much of it to the imagination as possible to avoid bringing up specific bad memories for anyone, but did give a few more specific examples, primarily on the transgender side of things. I did not use any slurs whatsoever. If you need to stay away from this right now anyway, please do.
> 
> TW: this is the first chapter that's angrier than it is funny, the angry to funny ratio has tilted quite a bit compared to the rest of the work. If you're having a tense time, wait a second, because this chapter gets tense. I'm sorry my dudes

Kanrki pulled into his driveway and just sat, still fucked up from all the crazy shit Dave said. He sat so long that his father also pulled into the driveway and stumbled out of his vehicle with a huge santa clause sack of items, looking drunk as fuck from a hard day of surgery, then waddled into the house. He looked at the clock on his dash and noted that his father was home exceptionally early, probably trying to get time off to clean the house a little before his mother came back so that the two of them could lie next to eachother nearly comatose with the TV on and hold hands for more of the weekend. He noted that Spring Break was almost over, and finally divorced himself enough from his fantastical line of thought to drag all his illgotten Taco Bell inside for his brother and boyfriend. Dad had undoubtedly gotten something on the way home, so there would be a veritable feast of non-microwaved foods. 

As he walked up the stairs from the side of the garage into the kitchen, Kankri thought back to when he was young and his mother had stayed home for a few years and they would actually have homecooked meals made with real foods. He tried to think of the last time he'd had homemade chips and chili with beef, beans, cheese and stewed tomatoes, but he was immediately aggravated to notice that he could see himself in the memory, as if he were watching from outside. He set the taco bell on the table beside his father's santa claus sack and opened it- nothing inside but dirty scrubs. UGH. "Dad, don't they specifically have a washing machine for these that they run at the hospital?" he shouted into the living room.

"Yeah, but I always get the wrong clothes back. That's why I wash them myself now, I can't wear a small and I don't need an XL, I need my own scrubs back, and I don't receive them." Kankri sighed. Dr. Vantas (MD) sighed, then waddled over to the kitchen to collect his santa sack, but looked at it with a great sadness. He whined to Kankri, "I'm so tired... can you just throw it in the washer for me please?" Kankri looked around the mostly clean kitchen, and into the mostly clean living room- much cleaner than he and his brother left it already though his father had been home for less than ten minutes. 

"Yeah, hang on." Kankri checked the taco bell bag, noting that Dave had indeed stolen enough food for more than three people to enjoy. he took out the diet pepsis and separated the food onto plates. "KARKAT! CRONUS! GET IN HERE." Cronus zoomed into the room immediately, as if he'd been lurking in the shadows nearby. A few seconds later, Karkat came in. "Dad, please sit down and eat." he gestured to one of the plates. "Cronus, Karkat, I brought back Taco Bell, but you have to help clean up the house to eat it." Dr. Vantas(MD) looked delighted despite his exhaustion and sat the fuck down to Detroit Smash his CrunchWrap Supreme™. Kankri poured him some diet soda in a vintage collectible McDonald's cup from the muppet movie that his mother had carefully handwashed to preserve its charm for years, then waddled downstairs with his father's Santa clause bag of gross surgery clothes. "God, I hope he didn't forget any scalpels in his pockets" he whined, finally making it down the treacherous basement stairs. 

After dumping all his shit into the washing machine, he stood in front of it, consciously trying to remember walking into the house to see if he could see himself in the memory. Just like Dave said, he couldn't, he could only see his hands doing stuff in front of him and his body when he looked down, but never the whole thing at once and never his face, just like the eyeball intended. He started to wonder how much of his world was real. So much of the events that lead to the creation of Kankri and came to define his life just didn't make sense, like both of his parents being Christian Demons that worship Jesus, or a lady demon who grew up on a horse ranch in Yeehaw Texas being on the east coast to go to doctor school and not being too xenophobic or wary of his foreign customs to marry a man demon who literally snuck in from Kandahar province, like six weeks after they met, to help him get a real green card because he suspected he was running out of time to abuse the fake one he got to stay in the country for school and didn't want to go home without completing his education and tell his family he was a failure. He considered the probability that his parents could both be doctors that other people refer to exclusively by "Dr. Vantas" lest they provoke the rage of the other spouse, who would inform them that they hadn't gone to doctor school to be called a Mr. or Mrs. no matter how confusing it'd make the conversation. He considered the likelihood that the entire family could be demons when being a demon appeared to be so rare, though he guessed genetics was genetics and people could be ill informed about all sorts of things- all of them were mostly harmless; most of the kids at school didn't even know Kankri was a demon, which he was particularly thankful for since that'd be another thing that'd earn him scorn and fear from his fellow students, even if he'd be in college next year.

He considered the probability that his mother could be so religious that she had to hang 23 crosses on the walls in the living room and kitchen, another 7 in the hall and two in the main bathroom so everyone would know, but also be totally cool and friction-free when he explained to her at eight years old that he had just learned about puberty in school, and he felt so uncomfortable to be separated with the girls, and that he was terrified of developing breasts and curves and getting a period because he was still convinced someday his weenie would grow in and everyone would know he was a boy. He explained he was starting to think it was too late and that he knew even his father just thought he was a regular girl, and that he'd just turn into a woman when that was completely wrong. He remembered how she'd just let him cry against her chest and explained to him that the doctor could help and immediately took him to start puberty blockers, then transferred him schools so he could start fresh without anyone ever having known he was female, even though she had to fight his dad about it every single day for two years. Two long years later, he finally gave up and left the two of them alone about the topic. He debated with himself how normal it could possibly be that he had managed to coast this far in school, never really having difficulty in any class, never having enough trouble with anything to get a truly bad grade, and no interest in getting up to naughty teen party time whatsoever. His parents were never home to reign him in- from everything he'd been convinced both in media and in his surrounding life, free range kids with busy parents like him were supposed to be ill-mannered burnouts. He guessed he could accept maybe this was just his personality and that maybe he was a little scared to socialize too much offline because of a lot of the things he'd heard about on social media and some amount of real world experience, but he struggled to figure how many of these things could fit into one life before it'd have to be fictional to support such intersections.

As Kankri was weighing the probability that all of these aspects of his life could fit together, Cronus appeared behind him, needlessly nervous, shivering as if he'd seen a ghost. "Kankri I'm gonna need to go to the neighbors and call the police, your dad's upstairs talking to ISIS in fluent ISISese." Kankri blinked several times, trying to determine if this weird stupid shit that was currently happening was real life or a bizarre simulation. He turned around, looking at his ignorant and terrified boyfriend. 

"Cronus, look at me. Look closely."

Cronus looked. "Yeah, you need to shave before monday, you're got like a baby goatee and the Principal doesn't like that. What about it?"

"Look closer, Cronus", he said, squinting and leaning in subconsciously as he grew steadily angrier, his gigantic manbun tilting forward with him.

Cronus looked closer, racking his brain for reasons he would ask him to do such when ISIS was on the phone with his dad upstairs. "Uh... I don't get it. Why am I looking at you right now? What am I supposed to see?"

"Does anything about me look... like maybe... my dad could be talking to people who you would think are ISIS? Without those people actually being ISIS?" Kankri asked, rage building within him, his stomach a little upset. Cronus continued to look, making the thinky face emote with his fingers against his chin, but he just didn't seem to be able to figure it out. Kankri seethed, nearly vomiting from the intensity of his anger, his vision going red. He grabbed the spraybottle of holy water next to the washing machine, unscrewed the squirter and poured it over his head to prevent himself from transforming into a vengeful demon and destroying his own house. "Cronus, let's go out in the back woods real quick."

"Uh... OK?" Cronus said unsurely, rubbing his arms nervously like a dumb little asshole. Kankri walked out into the back woods where Karkat and his friend had recently attempted to eat their faerie dinner, Cronus in tow.

Kankri took the rubber band out of his gigantic manbun and allowed it to unfurl over his shoulders in a cascade of sloppy curls not entirely unlike those of Maui from the recent animated picure Moana, then whipped off his shirt and rolled it a few times, set it on top of his head, then tied the rolled sleeves around the body to make it look like one of those desert hats just as several of his classmates had done to make fun of him in grade school on multiple occasions and totally gotten away with because of 9/11, his moobies flapping with the rapid arm movement. "Cronus, would you let me on an airplane right now?" he asked, his gut bubbling with rage as he awaited Cronus saying something dickpuntingly ignorant.

"Oh, when your brother told me not to talk about..." Cronus stopped before he got himself killed. He had noted that Kankri's moobies looked like ordinary, wiggly little fat boy moobies- not even an A cup- and not like girl boobs, which is what he expected to see when he'd said not to discuss them with Kankri. He recalled the line about Kankri having come out ten years ago- he would have been eight, prepubescent. His mother was supportive- he FINALLY connected that Kankri was FtM transgender, and that he had been allowed to start his transition with puberty blockers because his mom was a psychologist and also reasonably cool despite her fucking intense religiousness. "Ohhhh. I see why you were telling me to look at you, but why did we have to go outside? Why did you bring it up now, and why are you so mad at me? Carry on with your activities, take your shirt hat off your head." Cronus said, waving his hand dismissively. "But wait, what does this have to do with your dad talking to ISIS?"

Kankri huffed and puffed, assuming that Cronus had finally connected that Kankri's appearance was notably ethnic in a way that made people assume he was a terrorist and had put him on the receiving end of mistreatment for literally his entire life, since he couldn't remember a time before September 11th. It seemed easier than he'd expected it to, and yet somehow significantly more difficult. Finally, he just screamed wordlessly with his hands balled into fists behind him, a caustic, ear-searing "AAAAAAAAA", much in the way Karkat had in this very spot just a few days previous, but unlike Karkat, transitioned into words. "CRONUS, ISIS IS FROM SYRIA, MY FATHER IS FROM AFGHANISTAN! ME AND KARKAT HAVE BEEN THERE TWICE! I BROUGHT YOU BACK A PRESENT LAST TIME! I GAVE YOU A PAKOL AND YOU SAID IT WAS THE WEIRDEST HAT YOU'D EVER SEEN AND I GOT MAD AT YOU! HE'S TALKING TO HIS FAMILY! AFGHANISTAN AND SYRIA ARE A THOUSAND FUCKING MILES APART! CRONUS! I FUCKING HATE YOU SOMETIMES!"

"Kankri, I have to be honest with you, the way you scream sometimes, I genuinely wish I'd been born deaf. If you do it too often, I will be deaf. I am in genuine physical pain, please quiet down. Your brother too, and your dad and also your mom. You are an entire loud family. Were your parents trying to selectively breed you guys for volume? Either way, SHHHHHH." Cronus responded. 

Kankri screamed again, directing another, less warlike "AAAAAAA" to God at Cronus's failure to acknowlege any of the things that were currently happening, his face to the sky and his hands grasping at the heavens for help as little spring raindrops fell, cooling his anger into cold, depressing acceptance that he somehow still wanted to fuck this douche and that his pattern recognition skills were atrocious for some reason despite a lot of indicators that he was honestly capable of a lot better. He dropped his face into his hands, breathing deeply to try to calm himself without crying over his thirst for the racist fuckboy before him. He faintly wished for the old days, before Cronus had tenderly stroked his dong, when he was still into Latula and repeatedly and forceully told himself, primarily due to internalized homophobia, that his affection for Cronus was entirely platonic and avoided every thought about him that popped into his head by imagining Latula instead. One delicate dong stroke was all it took to reveal to him that his lust for Cronus had always been there and was stronger than he'd ever anticipated in his wildest, gayest dreams.

"Hey. Heeey... It's OK. Calm down, we're OK. See?" Cronus gingerly reached over and took the shirt off Kankri's head. "Now we don't look silly, no ones gonna call the cops on us for being too close to their house and screaming looking angry and scary, we're good. Here." He handed the shirt back.

Unable to process all the horrible emotions he was feeling, Kankri took the shirt back and looked at it with a sense of detachment from reality, his head aching from his hard won victory over the adrenaline rush that he had barely stopped from turning his entire body into a thrashing cloud of furious fists and feet aimed at Cronus like in the old cartoons. He unfurled it and put it back on, still nauseous from the visceral rage and its effects on his body. "Cronus, do you understand anything because of this conversation? Anything at all? Even the tiniest, least significant thing?" 

"Well", Cronus said, "I understand that you make yourself so angry, that you popped a blood vessel in your face? because you've got some red freckles. Let's start going to the gym together!" he offered, trying to be helpful. 

"CRONUS!" he screamed again. "YOU NEED TO STOP AVOIDING EVERYTHING THAT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE! IT'S NOT OK! I'M GONNA DUMP YOU!" 

Cronus gasped, looking extremely hurt. "uuuuuuuhhhhh?!" he whined. "Uuuuuuhhhhhh?" his brain strained around all the artificial barriers it'd built itself over the last several years to keep his life flowing smoothly. "Please don't?! Not yet, you know I need help, you accepted me knowing I need help, please don't leave me for needing help, please?!" he whinged, shivering a little due to the high stress of the situation. Kankri choked on another scream, trying not to let his blood pressure get so high that a pinprick on his big toe could send him spiraling away into the sun. 

"I am so angry that I want to have a seizure." Kankri announced. "Cronus, here's what I need you to understand. Are you ready? Can we make a note in your phone?"

Cronus nodded. "We'll have to go get it off the charger in the bedroom, I ran it dead." 

"Alright, here's what I need you to understand, while you live in my house, eating my food, playing Karkat's Nintendo." Kankri asserted. Cronus looked at him attentively, nodding as if to indicate for him to go ahead. "My dad is not talking to ISIS. Nobody in my house is ISIS. We don't even speak the same language ISIS wants everyone to speak." Cronus nodded, as if he understood. "Please tell me what I just said."

"Nobody's talking to ISIS. I made a mistake and you almost broke up with me." Cronus said.

Kankri nodded, satisfied that he had at least managed to impress upon Cronus that nobody in his home was a terrorist and that his accusations of such were a bad idea and not to be repeated. The two of them went back to the house, cleaned up a bit and Detroit Smashed all their Chalupas and Gorditas before going to bed, as the hour had grown late. Kankri laid there beside Cronus in his totally dope WonderWoman bed, staring at all the little glow in the dark stars on his ceiling, unable to fall asleep. He still really worked up about what Cronus had said earlier, even though he'd accepted that Cronus was a fucking idiot, and had no idea what he was doing at any given time, and that it was a miracle he could function even a little bit on his own at all. He had already forgiven him for being so stupid. However, that wasn't all that was bothering him. He was also stewing in his anger, unable to let it go and remembering every time in his life that something similar had happened and made him just as fucking angry, so angry that his blood pressure popped little blood vessels in his face. He remembered his various runins with kids at his elementary school, the time he got taken to the principal's office in third grade because he got so sick of it he started beating the stuffing out of another child in front of all his friends with such ferocity that they were afraid to intervene. He couldn't help but notice, just like Dave said, that he saw all these memories as if he were watching from outside, his entire tiny and furious body in his field of view. Fake memories. He questioned what cruel entity would give him fake memories like the ones he had.


	9. Repressed Memory Emilio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanrki receives the Repressed Memory Emilio therapeutic toy.

Kankri overthought his existence until at least 3 am, and was surprised to wake up to Karkat throwing mail all over him. "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!" He screamed in a max volume approximation of the AOL voice, then scampered away giggling, probably to go to Jade's house like he did almost every weekend. He looked blearily at his alarm clock- it was already 11 in the morning. Kankri teetered into the kitchen to stir an egg into some microwave curry for breakfast and get him some of that good wawa juice to get rid of the crusty post insomnia morning throat feels. One breakfast and grooming Montage later, securing what would usually be his giant manbun into a low founding fathers style ponytail, Kankri teetered back into his room to open all his mail. 

Most of his boxes and envelopes from amazon contained shit he heard he would need after he moved into his dorm next fall, which he had decided to start purchasing early while he still collected allowance and didn't pay rent, several envelopes contained greetings and suggestions from his future professors so he could kick the semester off right, or notices from the school about orientation and summer events meant to help him meet future classmates. To his delight, however, one of them contained Repressed Memory Emilio, the therapeutic doll that helps you recall! It seemed almost suspicious that he had arrived so soon; amazon had promised he'd take at least another week. Kankri unwrapped the doll and his accompanying diary, then looked deep into his beady button eyes. "We're gonna help Cronus today. You're gonna fix everything. He's gonna be dashing and sexy and aware of his surroundings and the happenings therein at all times, and not racist, he'll become arguably capable of love, and we'll be able to fuck without making me hate myself for doing it! Maybe I can marry him, if i eventually decide that I want to get married and that I should do it to Cronus for some reason. I might, little buddy! I like it when he sleeps in the bed with me. Makes me feel extra cozy and sleep great. It's gonna be fan FREAKING tastic." Emilio said nothing in the face of these fantastically unrealistic expectations that Kankri had uncharacteristically revealed, because he was a doll. Kankri set Emilio and his accompanying diary on the bed, then walked around looking for Cronus. 

He discovered him sitting in the living room with his dad. The two of them commenced making fun of Kankri for having such long hair and being a hippy, taunting him to cut it. His dad proceeded to take him outside to play catch with an American football and grill a bunch of meat, and he realized that to try to make up for being so racist the previous day, Cronus had somehow convinced his father to accept the validity of his gender identity. This wouldn't be the weirdest thing Cronus had ever done, so he didn't question his interpretation of the turn of events. With the knowlege that Cronus had been arguing with a lawyer every time he wanted to do something or got himself in trouble since he was old enough to want to do shit his parents didn't want him to do, he didn't doubt that this was possible, especially since he'd seen him win numerous arguments against the school faculty, and eternally lamented that he couldn't get him to join the debate team.

Kankri and Dr. Vantas (MD) proceeded to do classic American dad and boy stuff for the rest of the day. After taking Kankri to the barber to give him his first short haircut, which his father immediately ruffled and told him made him look handsome, they played catch in various locations around the town with a variety of balls, got a professionally done dad and boy phtoshoot posing with sports equipment and wearing their favorite player jersies, watched an action movie together, had a really intense Nerf gun battle in the back yard complete with the accompanying mouth noises, and attended a local sports ball game together, at which they ordered some of those snacks the vendor throws at you. Every time Dr. Vantas (MD) met a new person who talked to them long enough to warrant an introduction, he told them, "I'm Dr. Vantas, and this my boy Kankri. He got into Princeton on a scholarship!" Kankri felt great. Dr. Vantas had already been telling anyone and everyone that Kankri got into Princeton on a scholarship ever since he got the acceptance letter, but without the 'this is my boy, Kankri' part, so he had a lot of warm fuzzies. At the end of the day, the two of them went to a little diner near the sportsball stadium and ate a secret meal they agreed not to discuss with his mother at which Dr. Vantas (MD) let Kankri have a few sips of his beer, then highfived all the way home. Dr. Vantas(MD) hung a big photo from their dad and boy shoot in the living room with the other family photos right away, and Kankri went to his room happy, having completely forgotten about Emilio and their plans. 

When he entered his bedroom, expecting to find Cronus peacefully asleep with all of his bedroom items in the state of harmony in which they were last sighted, he instead discovered that Emilio helped him remember things, just as promised in his tagline. He was exactly as asleep as Kanmri had expected, but while Kankri was having his long overdue dad and boy day, Cronus had created two of those crazy conspiracy theorist string and picture diagrams, one of which took up only one wall and the other of which spread across two walls and onto the ceiling, with a disheveled pile of papers and several different colored balls of his mom's yarn still resting at the bottom. The strings were connecting together a bunch of pictures, news articles, hand drawn pictures done extremely shittily with crayons, and handwritten notes also written shittily and in crayon.

Kankri approached the smaller string diagram first. Unfortunately, Repressed Memory Emilio had apparently caused Cronus to remember his native and most comfortable language was still Greek and probably always would be, so Kankri could not read a single fucking one of the notes he'd frantically scrawled onto one of the diagrams, which he noticed seemed to have a lot of printoffs of Greek newspaper articles be guessed to be about missing girls, and pictures of the Ampora patriarch's medically diagnosed bitchy resting face, his age traceable via his unfortunate natural scowl, some of which depicted him with other members of his family in various locations, a few of which included baby Cronus, who Kankri noted to be a very cute baby indeed, and one of which included baby Eridan, who Kankri noted to be a signficantly cuter baby. A single yellow notecard in Cronus's nearly illegible but loopy handwriting stuck to the diagram urged in English, 'Kankri, don't worry about this diagram, please look at the other one.' 

Following his instruction, Kankri looked at the other diagram instead, which was actually done in english, and like Dave's notebooks, recreated the entire work of homestuck, but was a million times shittier because Cronus's untalented ass had done it. As Kankri reached the flipbook portion that depicted cascade, Cronus jumped up from his slumber, grabbing his hand. "Kangri!" He slurred, half asleep. "Wait. There's music. It's better with the music." He fucked with his phone for a second, then played a much better version of the track Dave had played at the mall the other day. 

"Oh, wow, you're actually a decent composer. When Dave played this exact same song yesterday, I wanted to take his phone away, stomp on it, and piss on its electronic corpse, but your version is cute and catchy. You should help him." 

"Leave Dave alone! He's a dumb baby, children are bad at everything, thats why we don't let them vote, drive or have jobs. I'm a dumb adult, I've had more time to git gud which is why mine's better." He slurred, sinking back into the pillows seamlessly as if he'd never woken up. 

Kankri shrugged, looking over the diagram of homestuck reluctantly, noticing it was a lot like Dave's in every way that was important except that the drawings were shittier and the music was better. He stood back and took a picture of it in its entirety, then put a big 😅 over the weird dad diagram to hide it. He took several more close up pictures of the individual elements before crawling into bed with Cronus, toasty and ready to sleep, but deeply concerned. He wondered what would happen if he used the Repressed Memory Emilio on himself. He rolled in bed, looking at the Emilio doll on the dresser. He swore the creepy little fucker winked at him, but wrote it off as a mild hallucination he'd caught on the way to sleepytown.


	10. Ooh la-londe

Rose got out of bed and looked out into the yard at the beautiful day before her. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, chipmunks and squirrels were eating out of the bird feeder on the front lawn that was explicitly for birds and neither chipmunks nor squirrels. DISGUSTING. "GET OFF!" She screamed out the window. "YOU KNOW THE BIRDFEEDER'S NOT FOR YOU!" The squirrels and chipmunks scattered, the birds were silenced, and your belief that this would be another Kankri chapter was tragically obliterated. 

She bopped down to the kitchen, where she expected to see neither of her emotionally unavailable parents but all three of her shitty and infuriating siblings, and was completely unsurprised to find Dave and Roxy conspiring to eat her limited production goth breakfast cereals, Dave already on the stepstool reaching for the treats, Roxy at the ready with bowls and spoons, licking her lips and wringing her hands in anticipation of the stolen goods. Rose immediately asserted herself. "HEY! GET YOUR GROSS HANDS OFF MY FRANKENBERRIES! THEY ONLY SELL THAT AT HALLOWEEN!" 

"YEAH, STOP BULLYING HER!" Dirk yelled. 

"IT TASTES LIKE STRAWBERRIES AND I WANT IT!" Dave shouted, refusing to remove his filthy paws from the monster themed box of sugar puffs. "WE'RE GONNA SHARE THIS CHEESY GOTH CEREAL AS A FAMILY ROSE!" 

"Yeah!" Roxy added, excited but not yelling because fuck that. 

"I'M GONNA PUT STRAWBERRY MILK ON IT SO IT'S EXTRA DELICIOUS!" Dave continued. 

"No! Oh my god, that's wrong, you've gotta use chocolate!" Rose cried in distress. "It makes it spooky!" 

"It makes it look like bloody poops!" Roxy insisted. "I'm gonna use plain milk like a member of civilized society." 

"And I'm going to continue to enjoy my own cereal that isn't Rose's special halloween only cereal she's insisted on eating every morning since she was eight." Dirk said with a shrug, gesturing to his marshmallow cereal featuring a depraved looking leprechaun. 

Dave sighed and stepped down, with his own frosted flakes, because he thought Dirk was hella cool and looked up to him. Roxy ascended the ladder and took the prized box of Frankenberry from betwixt the boxes of booberry and count chocula. "I'm still doing it!" She said. 

"It'll make Rosey sad." Dirk said, chewing his cereal emotionlessly and loudly like a fucking horse, his sunglasses still on his face even though he was indoors and had just gotten up for the day. 

"It'll make Rosey angry." Rose said, trying to look spooky and vaguely threatening. 

Roxy poured the limited production goth breakfast cereal into her bowl, because she does what she wants. Rose wailed in anguish at having one less bowl for buffer between the next six and a half months and halloween. What if she ran out? What would she eat for beeakfast? Internally, she wailed, but externally only pouted while she got her huge black tentacle chalice bowl to eat her cereal out of like she did every morning and poured milk first like a psychopath while all three of her siblings watched with concern. It looked to be a pretty normal day. 

After getting her lacy black parasol and her traveling backpack to keep her spring aesthetic gloomy and her options open, Rose went for a walk, aiming her trajectory toward the bus that would take her to the beach if she felt like it, but also toward the historic district and the park If she felt like that instead. Since unlike some spoiled and bratty rich children with male entitlement issues and a high likelihood of committing a school shooting COUGH COUGH ERIDAN COUGH she couldn't go to a foreign land and have exotic adventures over her spring break, she at least intended to have a reasonably fun time and maybe meet some cute local girls she wouldn't have to say goodbye to when schule resumed. So far this week, that second part had been somewhat of a bust, but today was a new day. 

Inevitably, she chose the park, because she'd long since started to feel wierd and uncomfortable about wearing a swimsuit or minimal dress of any kind; she had stopped swimming since the first pangs of puberty and the social expectation to be permanently flawless and fuckable descended on her tiny unsuspecting body and started to bully her unfortunately very succeptable brain, which was convinced her baby thirteen year old thighs were fat because they touched eachother and that her itty bitty thirteen year old tumtum was enormous because it wasn't dramatically concave and bounced a little bit if she was being energetic. 

Fortuitously, playing it safe by avoiding her swimwear paid off, as she spied another female goth in her age category hiding under a tree up ahead, and made her approach. The other girl was tall, willowy and elegant, with a hooked nose and a daring short haircut dyed a gorgeous green. She was pulling a punky look for some reason today, featuring intentionally torn leggings and a sweater who's arms were held on with numerous safety pins. Suddenly, Rose felt a little intimidated, but only just enough to be kindof awkward when she just plonked down beside her. "Man, it's a pretty shitty day to be outside." She said, despite the objective fact that it was literally fucking beautiful. "All this noise and air pollution." She closed her parasol.

The tall and elegant girl agreed. "Everyone's so fucking happy. Don't they know the world is burning?" She asked. "I mean literally, we're going to flood and fry within our lifetimes because of industrial emissions, and they're out here doing fuck all nothing about it. They could at least have the decency to be sad." 

Rose nodded. This was going well, this girl was extremely angry and edgy and that blew her thirteen year old mind. "I know of a locally sourced vegan restaurant nearby. They have a separate tea menu and reccomend pairings with the meals, and they have a shop cat! Would you like to accompany me for lunch?" She asked. 

"Yeah!" The tall elegant girl replied. "Want to go to a protest afterward? We all hate the president and pretty much every one of his policies independently, but we've made arrangements to do it in a group together outside today. We have signs! I used blood from the butchers shop, but I said it was from my period so I'd look hard, except I haven't had a period in my life heavy enough to make a whole angry sign with. Please don't tell anyone, I'm so embarrassed I blurted all that out just now. I'm Kanaya by the way. " 

Rose nodded and introduced herself and the two of them wandered off to have locally sourced ratatouille and express disdain for the current president. The two of them spent the rest of the day getting up to shenanigans around the historical district together doing things Kanaya liked, which Rose pretended to be into even when she wasn't. They spray painted rebellious messages onto some of the walls in town, broke into an abandoned building and wrecked a refrigerator with random shit they found, and joyrided the park security officer's golf cart around the park until they ditched it in a creek. They then broke into another abandoned building to witness a spontaneous punk concert featuring all the kids with garage bands. Teens punched eachother for no reason at all as tbe bands played. Rose wasn't really into the music, the violence, or all the parts about pissing off the police and getting their attention on purpose, but all the exciting danger made her feel spicy and alive. At the end of the day, they exchanged discord contacts and discovered they'd be attending the same highschool next fall. Her belly was still full of butterflies after Kanaya walked her back to the bus stop and waved to her through the window until they lost sight of eachother.

Satisfied about her use of her time and the ability to contact Kanaya to attend punk functions and partake of plant based food products again in the future, she went home expecting it to mark the end of her day. 

But it didn't.

As she came home, she noticed Dave leaving in a hushed rush. "Dude, where are you going? We're thirteen and it's not a good idea for us to run around alone at night no matter how tempting it seems, there's horny creeps out looking for stuff to fuck." 

Dave looked at her, though his expression was extremely difficult to discern due to the fact that he was still wearing sunglasses like a complete fuckass. "It's ok, I'm on my way to visit the horniest creep in New Jersey, I'll be safe. His alpha creep aura forces lesser creeps away." 

"Why are you visiting Cronus Ampora?" Rose asked, immediately knowing who the fuck he meant. "Isn't he in Greece right now? Probably pissing on the Parthenon and angering the locals?" 

"No, he's here, he did something fucked up and got sent home." Dave looked emotionless and also couldn't see due to his cool accessory decisions. 

"Classic Cronus. I wondered what could have possibly stopped Eridan from messaging me every day about why rightwing youtube videos prove I should dress the way he likes, eat bacon and be his girlfriend even though I don't fucking want to do any of that and have blocked him on three separate accounts. Whatever he did must have been extremely distressing. Anyway my question still stands. What the fuck are you doing, Dave?" 

"Talking to the horniest creep in New Jersey, I told you. It's not your business yet, leave me alone!" He shouted, running away and almost eating dirt from tripping over a shrub. 

"PLEASE DONT BANG ERIDAN'S BROTHER! HE'S STINKY AND WEIRD!" Rose called after him. 

"I WON'T!" Dave squealed in response. Rose decided she just had to trust him, since she wouldn't be caught dead within a fifty foot radius of Eridan. Even the idea made her feel gross.


	11. The fucking cops show up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tw: mention of murder
> 
> Tw: cannibalism

Despite all of Rose's concerns and much to Dirk's delight, Dave managed to come back to the Lalonde/Strider household relatively unmolested, outside of the general area of effect molestery vibes Cronus naturally gave off. In the early morning hours, she heard him shriek at the sight of a well placed smuppet and giggled a little bit. Smuppet sightings were one of those things that were hilarious when they happened to other people, but disgusting when they happened to you. 

A few weekends later, as Rose was busy looking at paranormal blogs to find haunted houses she could explore with Kanaya over the summer, a frantic knock came at the door. Roxy beat her to answer it, and soon, Jade, Jake, John, Jane, Feferi, Terezi, Sollux and Karkat all hurried inside, begging the gagglefuck of sarcastic blonds to activate their television set. "Something happened at Eridan's house!" Jade told everyone, "the channel 4 news van and all the cops are there, someone must have caught Eridan planning to shoot up the school!"

"No way!" John interjected. " I bet Mr. Ampora did tax fraud or money laundering or something." 

"Naw, I bet Cronus finally got caught with snuff pornography or something comparably awful", Roxy wagered. 

Dirk flipped the TV to channel 4 action news just in time to see officer Pyrope dragging Eridan's father out of the house in handcuffs while he kicked and screamed about his rights. They discovered from the news anchor's explanation that the terrifying specter who had haunted their childhoods since he dropped his son off for the first day of school and popped their balloons, wilted their flowers, rotted their packed lunches and ruined their haircuts with the overwhelming power of his scowl was named Elias. His face was blurred to protect viewers, but it was extremely obvious. They showed a picture of him as a young man in Greece, and he looked just like Cronus before his debilitating RBF had set in. "AYYYYY!" everyone in the room yelled before erupting in giggles.

"Booyeah!" John hollered triumphantly. 

"SHH." Karkat urged John to shut the fuck up, as he already didn't like him very much. "We'll miss the reason." 

The broadcaster announced that Mr. Ampora was being deported to Greece to go on trial for the murders of seventeen girls based on an anonymous tip, all the while showing more pictures of him as a smiling law scool student who looked like a twilight zone version of Cronus who wasn't functionally braindead and didn't particularly care whether he looked like a nerd. All this had come to pass, she explained, just a couple weeks after their eldest son had run away from home. It cut to an interview with Yaya Ampora, who was weeping inconsolably about the loss of her grandson and the discovery that her son may face the death penalty, begging Cronus to come home and asking viewers to contact the family with information regarding his whereabouts. 

"He told us he was Kicked out", Karkat grouched. 

"Quiet", urged Sollux. "I hope they put Eridan on. I want to watch him act dumb AF on tv."

"Did you say an Internet abbreviation out loud again?" Jane asked the nerd with obvious frustration. He nodded and Feferi answered yes on his behalf. 

The shot cut to the house again, the reporter standing outside and talking about the seventeen missing girls, revealing that a search of the Ampora family's basement freezer turned up butchered human remains labeled as various cuts of meat. Eridan popped his head out the window for a moment, looking at the reporter with concern before his mother's hand appeared to yank his head back in. Everyone in the room cheered. "AYYYYY!" several of them shouted. Finally, the screen cut to what was obviously Cronus wearing a horse head mask to protect his identity, his voice modulated for the same purpose- but nobody except himself and his stupid brother wore that much casual hand jewelry on a day to day basis, especially with that many fucking amethysts, so it didn't do a whole lot for the idiot. Cronus stood proudly in front of his shitty conspiracy diagram, gesturing to it with pride and describing how he got his dad busted for eating all those girls. "AYYYYY!" a bunch of them screamed again. 

Rose stumbled to the kitchen, her world turned upside down, and tried to catch her breath and steady her uneasy tummy. Something was horribly wrong in the world- anyone with the surname Ampora doing a good thing at personal expense to themself seemed like an impossibility. Between the entire family's recklessly entitled behavior and Elias's medical condition, the family's presence actually lowered the property value for the entire block despite being tidy and wealthy. She vomited into the trash can several times at the feeling of disorientation, there was no way the horniest creep in New Jersey could do the right thing independently. There had to be some kind of monetary reward or other material incentive for him to have done this. 

Jade and Roxy ran into the kitchen at the sound of the he vomiting. "Oh no!" Jade yelled, watching with concern but also disgust. 

"Rose! Are you ok? Is the the flu?" Roxy asked frantically.

"I don't feel so good..." she said, then threw up again. 

"Is it because of the human meat thing? " Jade asked. "Did you have dinner at their house? I know Eridan was always asking you to go over there." Rose thought to herself-she had ended up eating dinner there once or twice because of her participation in middle school debate club. She barfed again forcefully. 

"Guys! Rose is puking because she ate human meat at Eridan's house!" Feferi shrieked with delight. 

"Uhhhh..." Jane droned. "You're his best friend. You ate human meat too ya dingus."

"Oh no!" Feferi gasped, putting her hands on either side of her face, but still smiling and not at all disgusted or in any danger of throwing up. Jade started to sympathy vomit into the Lalonde family trash can on behalf of all the people who probably ate human booty meat at Eridan's house, even though she definitely hadn't due to her vegetarian lifestyle. 

"I'll be right back, you guys. Im gonna go check out the Ampora family's basement real quick." Jake announced creepily. Dave immediately followed him, carrying a jar filled with preservative fluids.

"Wow, what a bunch of fucking creeps!" John announced, failing to notice Jane or Terezi creeping after them, tiptoeing behind him to avoid catching his attention. 

"Wow, Feferi, babe." Sollux said, creeping closer to her. "You probably ate people with that creepy family. Do you need me to comfort you on a bed owned by an annoying boy who created a rap terrible enough to make Gamzee go coocoo and get kicked out of our collective academic emporium for a week?" 

"Sollux, stop trying to hide your lisp by trying to avoid ever using the letter s. It's more annoying than the actual lisp is, you hideous bucktoothed freak." Karkat insisted. 

Sollux wasn't paying attention, though. With her hands still on her cheeks, Feferi looked at him through the corners of her eyes. "Yes!" She whispered. The two of them sprinted up the stairs giggling, headed for Dave's room. Rose stopped vomiting momentarily to notice that Feferi and Sollux were alarmingly creepy and gross, then carried on with her activities. Dirk gave a thumbs up and a single approving nod as they passed him, the wind in the wake of their velocity ruffling his hair. 

"Fear not, fellow children." Karkat announced. "I, the only ratonal person in this home, shall put a stop to their sloppy makeouts." He stood in a superhero pose for a moment before stomping up the stairs after them. "SOLLUX! STOP BEING GROSS!" He yelled, his voice penetrating the house to its very frame, shaking it slightly. Dirk gave a thumbs down and a disapproving shake of his head as Karkat passed. 

John watched Dirk approve and disapprove of these things with a stare of complete confusion. "Does your whole family wear sunglasses indoors?" He asked. 

"Dave does it because I do it." Dirk grunted, scratching his butt. He turned the TV back to the great British bake off now that the Eridan thing had ended. 

After the sick feelings had subsided, Roxy, Jade and Rose sat on the kitchen floor together eating pickles and drinking fresh frosty wawa to recover from the dehydration the puking had caused. 

Rose was the first to speak. "I feel like we should do something. " she announced to the other girls. 

"I mean like? What though?" Roxy asked. 

"I'm not doing anything, the cops have got this." Jade stated. 

"I said we, Jade, Not I." Rose stated again. Jade nodded in understanding. She was going to do something. 

"I'm gonna call my friend Kanaya. She'll know what to do, she's got her shit together."


	12. You probably thought it'd be a Kanaya chapter but it's not time yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just not the right time ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Cronus rolled off the couch and immediately decided to go to Denny's for a called the cops success snaque when Karkat showed up all pissed off and furious looking. "Cronus! What the fuck, you told us you were kicked out, but your Grandma's on the news saying you ran away and that the whole family is desperate for you to come home!" he hollered, literal smoke bellowing off his head because he is an actual fucking demon.

Cronus held his hands in front of him in a position that directed Karkat to fucking stop. "Woah, woah. Karkat, Kar, please. I'm positive you've finished second grade and aren't a complete and total doofus- of course my family wants me to come home, I just sent my dad to prison. In Greece. Where he is probably going to die. They want to give me the cement slippers, Karkat. I didn't move all of my shit into my wizard van for nothing."

"Cronus, no one believes you! In the past four weeks, I've watched you lie about your ethnicity, the hair products you use, why you were covered in blood after work which really didn't require any explanation since you were standing outside a fucking hospital, your fucking actual NAME, and WHETHER YOU WERE DATING MY BROTHER, REPEATEDLY." Karkat fumed, his body transforming into a body that looked almost exactly like his human body but with giant pheonix wings, sharp teeth, horrible talons on his hands and feet and little candycorn horns on his skull. 

Cronus put one hand on his hip, swatting the air in the demon boy's general direction dismissively. "Karkat I don't care what those pretty girls at the mall think or whether your brother's willing to admit he's dating me or not, I am almost a married man and they have no business telling me my butt looks nice." 

"YOU'RE NOT DATING MY BROTHER!" Karkat screamed.

"Tell that to your brother." Cronus said, winking and wiggling an eyebrow knowingly. 

"I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO, HE ALREADY KNOWS!" Karkat clutched at his hair, nearly tearing it out of his candycorn-adorned skull at the notion of Cronus existing somehow in his home. He had high hopes when the Repressed Memory Emilio had temporarily allowed him to remember he was from Greece and was not in fact Italian-American like 'everyone else' in New Jersey, an assumption which excluded himself as well as almost everyone he knew, but Cronus seemed to immediately lose all of his progress the day that Dave came over and declared Emilio to be 'really cool' and asked to take him home to scare his siblings with. Emilio was never seen again, and Cronus went back to being a complete fucking idiot. Karkat turned toward the bedroom wing in the house, raising his voice to new and dangerous volumes. "KANKRI! GET OUT HERE AND DUMP CRONUS!" 

Kankri lumbered out of his room, bags under his eyes from doing both Cronus's homework and his own due to his father's insistence that Cronus had to work at the hospital with him to pay for all the food he ate and electricity he wasted, especially since he took like 45 minutes in the shower consistently for some reason. "Karkat, stop. Please, I know you love yelling. I know it is your absolute most favorite thing that you have ever done in your life, you were born yelling and you will probably die yelling, but I need you to..." Kankri stopped suddenly, running to the kitchen for the holy water spray bottle. "FUCK! FUUUCK! CRONUS YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO PUT US OUT WHEN THIS HAPPENS! HE'S GONNA SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE!" deftly, he dumped all the holy water over Karkat's head. Karkat shuddered and moaned in an otherwordly expression of agony, sinking to the floor and resuming his usual appearance. "Anyway, Karkat, stop yelling, we all fucking hate it and kindof hate you."

Karkat stood back up with a wince and took a stance of odious sanctimony in an obvious and unflattering imitation of his shitty brother's atrocious body language. "Nobody hates me, I am definitely both mom and dad's favorite without question, and I called you for something important. Cronus thinks you guys are dating." He opened one eye and peered down his nose at Kankri, as Kankri frequently did to others. 

Kankri looked at him for a moment, dumbly, then developed a socially awkward shudder, he brought his hands together in front of him and hunched his shoulders somewhat, cringing. "What? Cronus, no, we're not dating, I told you that already. I mean, I really like you, uh... physically, I like you physically a lot- but I mean, the rest of you... like, socially, mentally, emotionally? You're uh... really... not worth dating at all. I thought I already explained pretty well that like, if you had literally any other personality, I'd be all over that; like even if I could just transplant even like Mituna's brain into your body, I'd probably marry it, but you're the person inside, and there's no way to get you out and replace you with someone else, so it's just not happening. We're... definitely not dating."

Cronus stared at the man who he'd been sharing a bed with, regularly bonking, having meals with, going on shitty mall dates with, and who was currently doing all his homework. "So I mean what I heard here is that you're physically attracted to me. You find me to be quite sexually appealing."

Karkat walked out of the room to avoid being in the middle of the awkward situation, but watched while lurking behind the doorframe like a filthy little rat. 

Kankri cringed again. "I mean yes, I definitely did say so, that's one of the things I said to you just now."

"Right, and in addition to that, you feed me, hang out with me like every day, do my homework for me so I have more time to relax from my stressful job, and take me places even if you apologize and shit because I ruin your friend's social dynamic literally 100% of the time. For once, I'm not out of touch because I prefer to avoid situations that cause me discomfort, Kankri. For once, you are the fucking idiot. We're totally dating, you're just really embarrassed and want to hide it."

"IT'S PRIMARILY A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP!" Kankri screeched immediately, covering his ears and squealing while he ran away from the truth and also Cronus. 

Cronus locked eyes with Karkat as Kankri ran back to his room where he would presumably do both his own as well as Cronus's homework, asserting his dominance. Karkat had no idea what the fuck to do, so he grabbed a box of pancake mix off the Kitchen counter and hucked it at Cronus. It hit him with an explosive puff, sending flour everywhere- just all over the carpet, and making Cronus look like a spooky ghost. "Woah, hang on. What the fuck." he said, approaching Karkat. "Dude, what the fuck." He towered over him, intimidating him with the tiny amount of upper body muscle he'd built from holding fat people open. Karkat stared up, having never been in an actual fight before, and internally prepared himself to get the shit beaten out of him as Cronus whipped his shirt over his head in a smooth motion like idiot street boys do when they're about to throw down. The rain of furious fists never came, and instead, Cronus just grabbed Karkat's shirt and used it to wipe all the dusty pancake mix off his face, then whipped his shirt at Karkat a few times to spatter him with it. Dust primarily consisting of flour with a bit of baking soda and other cooking garbage in it rained onto the tile floors. "Hey buddy, that was super mean. You should probably pick all this up before your dad comes home and hollers about how his beautiful home is never clean." Karkat stared wordlessly up at the man, feeling oddly threatened even though he wasn't that buff or that tall. Maybe he had been wrong about Repressed Memory Emilio- something really had changed, but Cronus just genuinely preferred being a fucking idiot for some reason. He put his shirt back on and resumed his usual sunny but dumb demeanor, waving goodbye as he walked away. "Anyway that candycorn shit sticking out of your head reminded me of something and I'll be fucking back. Ok, buhbye!" Cronus lied. He would not be right back, because he was going to get blueberry pancake puppies.

"Wait, if you're concerned your remaining family members want to kill you, isn't is dangerous to go out?!" Karkat asked, but he was too late. Cronus had already gone. He was left to tend to his weeping brother, who was still in denial about the fact that he was honestly in a relationship with Cronus and not just using him for sex.


	13. THE ACTUAL FUCKING QUEST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wondered what the fucking point was, and it's finally here! The Cronusquest, the quest specifically for Cronus. Cronus's quest.

Cronus strutted down the street, looking a way Kankri would describe as sexually attractive, making his way to the location Dave had wanted to meet up at to describe his conspiracy theory in greater detail. Now that Cronus had expressed interest after making the diagram depicting the events of homestuck, Dave wanted to tell him everything. What he didn't know was that now that Cronus could remember living the full events of homestuck and knew that all his human memories prior to turning thirteen were fake, he also knew that this was the compromise they'd taken to end the game and defeat the final boss, and that everyone had been nice enough to include him and all his dead friends, so all of his fake memories were important, because he needed them to navigate the new universe they'd entered. After putting his horrible dad in Jail because fuck that guy, all he had to do was make sure neither Gamzee nor his horrible stinky brother Kurloz ever, ever got ahold of the Repressed Memory Emilio doll, which was probably some manner of juju, because they'd start some fucking shit and it'd be horrible and bad for everyone involved and he'd have to go back to being a shitty alien ghost who is not a human and also not banging Kankri. All he really intended to do on this meeting was tell Dave he was fucking stupid and ask for his therapeutic doll back so he could hide it. As he approached Dave and did not see the doll, he realized this was not going to be as easy as he anticipated. 

"HI!" Dave said, waving awkwardly like the toddler he was. "Get over here the government doesn't monitor food trucks!" he said excitedly. Cronus knew this was an infant's mistake, the government monitors food trucks more than brick and mortar establishments because they're more likely to be cash only businesses which means it's easier to do crime there. He smiled and trotted over stupidly. 

Cronus pulled a chair up backwards and straddled it, smiling vapidly. "Alright kid, I'm ready. Tell me about homestuck." Dave proceeded to tell him everything about homestuck, and Cronus nodded along like he was actually interested and not trying to stop the kid from dragging everyone back in to his clusterfuck of a session. He let Dave tell him a few things and waited for a convenient pause, finally interjecting, "Cool, cool. But I need just one small thing. Can I have repressed memory Emilio back? I probably have other repressed memories. I think I got kiddy fiddled." 

Dave looked at him skeptically, an eyebrow raising above his shades. "Cronus, I just told you, none of our memories are real."

"Well, Buddy, I'm pretty sure I'm on a quest to send a lot of this planet's denizens to jail, make them pay and face justice? You know? Maybe part of my redemption arc. I need Emilio back please. It's extremely important." he said, using his many years of fake memories and small amount of real memory of convincing a lawyer to let him do things to act very sincere.

Dave's eyebrow remained in its skeptical position. "We don't have denizens here, that was in the sessions..."

"Naw, this is totally still part of our session." Cronus interrupted. "We got a more complicated quest as a subgame, it's obvious. So I need the Emilio."

"No, I told you, the session's out there somewhere, all this bullshit where we go to school and grow up and have jobs and all that business is a load of bullshit, and we can get back in! We can finally win for real, get a satisfying ending that makes sense to the audience. Don't you even care about the audience, Cronus?"

"FUCK THE AUDIENCE, DAVE!" he said at an entirely inappropriate volume for a meeting at a covert establishment. 

"WE COULD BE GODS!" dave screamed, matching his volume and causing everyone at the collection of park benches adjacent to the food truck to look.

Cronus waved at all of them, standing up. "Please ignore us!" he announced cheerily. "We're both tripping on acid." The patrons looked away, resuming their activities.

"Cronus, did you just tell everyone to leave us alone because we're a couple of kids on acid?" Dave asked. 

"I mean, no, I'm not a kid, and I never mentioned kids, and I'm certainly not a liar who would tell people I was a kid, so I most certainly did not do that." he stated, folding his arms over his chest and putting all his fanciful hand jewelry on display. He sat back down. "But no matter what you're talking about or why you're talking about it, I still need the Emilio back, for numerous reasons involving Kankri and my future banging him."

"You can bang Kankri in the session." Dave insisted. 

Cronus rapidly extended his arm, pointing his finger at Dave and then at the air. "No! I most certaily can not bang Kankri in the session, because the session is not real! I'm starting to think you lost my therapeutic toy, my small dude. Do I need to shake you upside down until it falls out of your pockets?"

"Uhhh... it's too big for my pockets." Dave said.

"Nothing is impossible with the strife specibus you were talking about my man, it could be anywhere. It could be behind your ear, and I could pull it from there like a magical quarter and wish you a happy birthday. It could be between your rosy little cheeks waiting to fall into the potty next time you wipe, it could even be in your room somewhere because you fucking forgot to bring it to me, but most importantly, I hope it doesn't currently belong to Gamzee, because whew lad."

"Gamzee's a Jerk", Dave agreed. Somewhere far away and uninvolved with this conversation, Gamzee honked innocently, no longer a malevolent clown, just an innocent techn9ne fan and victim of systematic discrimination with a hungry mamma who works hard for him. "I showed him a rap video and he got like super pissed." Dave continued. "I thought he liked rap."

Cronus nodded even though he didn't agree with him. "Right so anyway, we both agree we don't want Gamzee to have Emilio."

Dave nodded. 

"So where's Emilio?" Cronus asked.

"Why should I give you Emilio? What does it matter who hides the juju as long as it gets hid?" the boy rebelled. "I can hide it and keep it safe, I honestly have a greater motivation to do so."

'no you fucking don't, virgin', Cronus thought to himself. "Hey, remember Homestuck? My ancestor's a pirate or some shit, right? That means I'm bomb at hiding treasure." he said, banking on the fact that nobody pays fucking attention so everyone thinks this is true. 

"Uh, he hunted pirates, you fucking idiot. Did you pay any fucking attention to the ancestor introductions at all?" Dave said, bobbing his head with his words as he spoke the truth to indicate his extreme disdain for the misunderstanding. 

Cronus leaned forward, setting his elbows on the picnic table and tenting his fingers above his forehead. His tone was dark. "Alright Dave, let's try again. My dad's a cannibal serial killer- on the same principal, what the fuck do you think I might be good at?" Dave froze, and Cronus knew he'd found a viable route to his goals. "Give me back the Emilio, Dave." he said in the spookiest school shooter voice he could summon from his normally cheery larynx. 

"My brother has it, he thinks it's the coolest thing in the fucking world." Dave sputtered, verbally shitting his pants. "We'd have to go get it from my house and pry it out of Dirk's cold, dead hands. Are you going to eat my brother?"

Cronus sat back up properly, putting his hands on the table with a silly slap. "No stupid, I'm gonna go to Denny's and eat blueberry pancake puppies. Don't be silly." He smiled with his eyes closed like an anime character. Dave had no idea what the fuck was happening or what he should do about the situation, so he took Cronus to Denny's. "Um, wow, this isn't your house." he said.

"Yeah, I figure if I feed you before I take you home, you probably won't eat my brother." Dave said, looking terribly sad. "So I'm gonna buy you some pancake bites or whatever."

"Pancake puppies you filthy animal", Cronus insisted, enjoying the power he gained from weaponizing his dad. 

"Yes, I understand. You want to eat puppies." Dave whimpered, already paying the girl at the front desk for like six full orders of the bastards. Cronus nodded encouragingly and accepted his puppies before making his way to the Strider/Lalonde household- both parents, of course, both emotionally and physically unavailable to their abundant crop of beautiful yellow haired sarcasm monsters. They walked inside, stepping over Rose's ouija board and various gothing supplies and around all of Roxy's shit she shoplifted from Macy's but hadn't gotten the ink magnet thing off of yet, and almost tripped and fell into a plush puppet ass. 

Cronus breathed in sharply, reeling back as he realized he'd nearly embedded his nose between felt cheeks. "David what the fuuuuucccccckk" he whispered.

"It's a smuppet." Dave whispered back. "It means he knows we're here." He put his fingers to his lips and started to tiptoe upstairs. Cronus stepped back and admired the smuppet- it was honestly a miracle that Dirk was still making these atrocious things and posing them sexually despite what he would assume were a bunch of implanted memories of a normal childhood. He personally witnessed the plush round rump and long phallic nose, and the awkward pear shapes of the things before tiptoeing up the stairs after Dave. He attempted to emotionally prepare himself for a jungle of smuppets, but they never appeared. They tiptoed closer and closer to the room, getting more and more anxious about seeing some smuppets, when finally, they were poised to open the door.

"So he faked us out, he's probably not even home." Cronus said, flipping the door open like it wasn't a big deal. A fucking tsunami of smuppets fell foward, several of which were equipped with refitted motor systems from Yellies™ toys, so that when Dave and Cronus began screaming from their unexpected burial in smut puppet rump, they began rapidly thrusting their plush pelvises in a sexual manner. Dirk sat on his bed beside Repressed Memory Emilio, laughing at both of them hysterically. 

"Hahaha, oh man, smuppets are so much better when there are people around to harass with their awkward and very overt sexuality. I'm so glad I don't live alone on an oil rig on the ocean." he said, quickly and lazily revealing that the Emilio had indeed helped him tell himself about homestuck. 

"My man!" Cronus popped out of the smuppets, giving Dirk a double gun finger. "Seeing as you appreciate company, I'm positive you'll be more than happy to aid me on my quest to keep Emilio away from the Makara family. 

"UHHHH, he's Lil' Cal now. He's always been Lil' Cal, and no one else can have him. I love Lil' Cal. He's my good buddy, he's almost as awkward as a smuppet. "

Dave and Cronus both stared at him questioningly.


	14. What in the name of fuck could Kanaya possibly do about this shit?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time now. The Kanaya chapter is here!

Summoned to Rose's house for a special assignment, Kanaya addressed the curious children gathered before her, which at her request, included Gamzee, Kurloz, Mituna, and Latula in addition to Rose, Roxy and Jade. Tavros had come too because of his gigantic tangled mass of confusing feelings about Gamzee even though literally no one had asked him to come there. 

"Alright so now that you're all here I can reveal my plan." Kanaya explained. "There's a few things cops can't stand, and one of those is interacting with a low income community. We cannot make the Ampora family lose money any faster than their shitty spending habits already will in the absence of their top income earner, but we can emulate their community having lower income fairly well if we lower the property value enough." The other children looked on in confusion, but Kanaya was happy to explain. "See, we just stand around the Ampora household, where the property value is already low, then do stuff that makes it lower, like commit petty crimes, do drugs, and spray paint on stuff. Punks and college students do it all the time, and it works."

"As stated previously, I will have nothing to do with this." Jade said, starting to walk out. 

"SQUARE!" Rose yelled, mostly to impress Kanaya. Everyone else started calling her a square, especially Mituna; except for Gamzee, who honked and tried to follow her. 

"No! Wait!" Kanaya gasped. "You're the most important person in this plan, because you're actually poor and look and smell poor." 

Gamzee's cute lil nose crinkled in disgust at her hella rude statement. "Dude your armpit hair smells like fresh taco bell diarrhea fed through a dead dog's digestive system who the fuck here smells poor?" 

Kanaya wrinkled her also cute nose "I don't smell poor I smell like a powerful woman who rejects the patriarchy, you smell poor because you are poor." 

"Yeah Gamzee you smell like kitty litter and aids." Mituna verbally flailed. 

"Ignore him, he has brain damage" Latula and Kurloz said in creepy unison, both patting Mituna as if he was the victim. 

"Anyway, let's all go." Kanaya said, acting as though the outburst had excused their rude classist argument when it definitely fucking hadn't. 

"But I'm with Jade!" Gamzee said. "I'm a good boy I don't want to do drugs and spray paint on things I want to go home." He lied. 

"Gamzee you know you don't want to go home, because your home is my home and it smells like cat litter and doesn't contain adequate amount of food." Kurloz stated. 

"Yeah but I can play fortnite at home. I cant play fortnite creeping around in Eridan's neighborhood scaring old ladies." He insisted.

"Yeah but Tavros is here so you can't play fortnite with him which means you're coming with us." Kurloz insisted.

"Cronus has a computer in the basement", Latula insisted. "You actually can play fortnite while the rest of us look at spooky human meat chunks and get grossed out for no reason aside from teenager curiosity." Latula said. 

"I wanna play fortnite!" Mituna squealed. 

"Ignore him, he has brain damage", Latula and Kurloz said again in creepy unison, both stroking the young man as if it would appease his need for fortnite. 

"I was like this before I had brain damage!" Mituna yelled. 

"No he wasn't." Both of them said, putting their hands over his mouth together so he couldn't object.

"That's enought everyone, we're forgetting the most important part, which is not the human remains, though that is spooky and cool. It's also that we get to visit a real serial killer's house and look for evidence of why he was such a deplorable cretin, and also discover what his son's motive for turning his creepy father in to the police could have been." Rose said, standing up to get more attention on herself. 

"We're and sure he's not just a good person deep down inside now matter how mean he acts fron being so stupid ignorant?" Mituna asked, raising his hand like he was in class. 

"No, he's a gigantic creep! There's no way he's a good dude. Someone paid him off." Rose replied, before anyone could apologize for Mituna talking even though he had the absolute right and it was patronizing not to let him. 

Everyone except Mituna nodded. He had been friends with him before the accident, and they were really close. Unfortunately he hadn't really handled the aftermath of the accident so well, but Mituna understood it was because he was an ignorant idiot with Google at his fingertips but none of the curiosity it'd take to use it. It was hard to talk out loud and move with decent coordination, not think. Besides, he had reasons to be an ignorant fuckwit- he'd lowkey confessed to him on several occasions that he knew what his father was doing and had been blocking it out to try to live his life, just like Mituna has constructed a new video game enthusiast persona to cope with the fact that extreme sports were an even worse idea now than they were before the event that had transformed his skull into a fragile dome of cobbled bone protecting his lightly scrambled head meats. 

"It seems like everyone agrees! Let's go!" Kanaya said enthusiastically. Mituna did not agree, but went anyway. The teen trouble troupe descended upon the cozy little neighborhood containing the Ampora home and spread out to perform their deeds. Kanaya publicly lit a bong and smoked big dopes in some other lawyer's back garden. Latula grabbed Mituna's ass and invited him to partake in intercourse with her at an alternate location, and Mituna pretended not to know her and agreed, then made out with her very sloppily against a dividing wall that was all that stood between two gay couples arguing about eachother's external paint jobs. Kurloz stood on the corner and resumed selling drugs to his fellow teens, but now further from his momma's house than usual and therefore much less likely to get beat with an extension cord or a wooden spoon when she inevitably caught him, but exponentially more likely to get dragged into the car by his ear. Roxy proceeded to purchase some of the drugs. Rose spray painted 'fuck the police' and an anarchy symbol onto the Ampora's siding directly. Tavros tied a bandana around his head and did donuts in the lawn with a pokemon card stuck into the spokes of his wheelchair so that when he went fast it sounded like he was riding a motorcycle and yelled catchphrases from sons of anarchy.

Gamzee watched all this folly with a disgusted sigh, noting that absolutely nothing was happening except that the cops were chasing the teens around and yelling at them to stop with their illegal activites, but not very committally since they were supposed to be just keeping people out of the house. Gamzee ruffled his hair to make it as big as possible, pulled up the hood on his hoodie so that a big healthy puff was still sticking out, stepped forward and unzipped his pants, then began publicly urinating on a garden gnome. The paint of the gnome cracked and peeled, and the sickness spread to the lawn, filling it with weeds and causing crabgrass to grow several inches longer than the HOA wpuld fine for. He continued to pee, moaning a little because he'd been holding it for a while, and paint peeled off the houses sidings, the driveways and sidewalks cracked, bloodied syringes appeared on the pavement, and the powerlines ripped through the sod and erected poles to hang from, interrupting the idyllic view of the sky with their menacing buzz. Trees fell and vanished, leaving yards with unappealing stumps, and wild dogs and cats began to roam the neighborhood. As Gamzee shook the last stubborn drip of pee from his weiner, gang tags appeared all over buildings and a bunch of dudes in bandanas and airbrushed tees appeared in the area. Gunshots could be heard in the distance. The property value completely destroyed, the police got scared and fled the area. All the other teens seemed terrified and wanted to leave, except Gamzee and Kurloz. "Aight we good." Gamzee announced. "Let's go see what's up." He said, kicking the now unevenly hanging front door straight the motherfuck in to the living room.

The other children looked on in awe at the chaos that had erupted from his outdoor wee wee. 

"See? I told yall he had to come." Kanaya said, pretending not to be scared at the outcome her plan had created. The children huddled into Eridan's house.


	15. Eridan's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids investigate

The Ampora family fled their ruined house in terror as the kids went inside to investigate. "HONK!" Gamzee yelled as Eridan saw the other children and stopped. He was not nearly as fat as Cronus had described him to be, but still more round than angular in most places. He immediately scowled at Gamzee and his brother and also Tavros. "You!" He said, more paint peeling around him as his frown intensified even though he was still a cute lil kid and the full extent of his RBF was yet to reveal itself. 

"What?!" Kanaya asked, stepping between Eridan and the children of color also scowling so intensely as to make varnish flake off nearby wooden trim. 

"They ruined my neighborhood with their poverty!" Eridan squealed. "Get off my block so the house goes back to normal!"

"No!" Kanaya screeched. The rest of the kids went around them and proceeded to fuck with the shit in the Ampora household. 

"What the shit is this?" Roxy asked, gesturing to a bunch of single use kitchen items that did stuff like turn potatoes into helix shapes or automatically peeled apples or chopped vegetables when you pressed a button. 

Dave stumbled up from the basement with a camera around his neck. "It's rich people garbage. All the cool stuffs downstairs, get in the basement losers." He said, sounding like a young cr1t1cal from the sheer amount of balls he needed to develop to look around this creepy house without scaring the cops away first. Rose, Mituna, Latula, and Roxy followed him into the basement immediately. Gamzee and Kurloz both agreed they'd look upstairs, away from Dave and his shenanigans. Tavros sat on the ground floor, intoning "uhhhhhh" as the home was not wheelchair accessible and he didn't want to leave on his own to escape from Kanaya and Eridan's argument because outside was scary now. 

In the basement, Roxy immediately discovered Jake, who despite being a free range home school kid, was sortof cute. Spaghetti flowed freely from her pockets and fell all over the floor. "Uh duh buh hello!" She said. 

Jake waved awkwardly and resumed rifling through a box of the Ampora family's christmas decorations. "Look! It's Eridan as a baby!" He announced, holding up a gold spray painted macaroni wreath picture frame containing a picture of eridan in first grade in his dumb little Harry potter looking private school uniform. 

"Aww!" Everyone present said. "He looks like a nerd!" Mituna added, finally catching up to the crowd. 

"Uh yeah I mean obviously that's because he's a nerd." Rose said. "Stop bullying him before he shows up to class with an AK47." 

Mituna shrugged and would do no such thing. He gestured to a couple doorframes in the partially finished basement. "So anywhere that's the room where Cronus sleeps? It smells like spornts. Ogre here is the washing mersheen, which is painfully underused." He said, gesturing to another door. "And over heeeeere, my friends," he added, walking backward with Vanna white hands, then immediately tripped over a crispy sock near the laundry room and fell on his ass. He continued from the ground, undeterred. "Is the door to the so calfed root cellar me and Cronus were never to go inside." He smiled even though his ass hurt. The basement children poured into the warshing room to witness the spooky padlocked door. 

"Get a bolt cutter." Roxy announced with determination.

Upstairs, Gamzee and Kurloz investigated the bedrooms and law office where it'd have made more sense for Cronus's bedroom to be if he were a valued and loved member of the family. Eridan's bedroom was full of military surplus bullshit, not all of it american, including huge munitions casings he appeared to be using to organize his stuff, and dvds about war history. It contained no fewer than 12 airsoft guns and uniforms with rotc patches and rank still on them, and a fuckton of utility knives and multitools. His huge and expensive gaming computer sat on a desk that was badly paper mache'd to look like the white house desk. The two decided this was fucking creepy and moved on. 

Yaya's entire room was decorated with knitted lace, embroidery, and other nice grandma crafts. Her closet was full of long old lady dresses and handkerchiefs to tie up her little babushka hairdo and garden with. The two decided this was cute as fuck and moved on. 

The master suite was by far the creepiest, because it looked totally normal until the boys opened the closet and all the couples creepy sex gear fell out, the closet overstuffed with kink shit past the point of all reason. The variety and number was fantastically overwhelming and indicated that the couple roleplayed all kinds of bdsm and vore shit. The Makara boys ran out and slammed the door, agreeing never to speak of that moment again for the rest of their lives. 

Finally, they investigated the lawyering room where Cronus and Eridan's evil father plied his craft. Full of legal books and sloppy paper piles about the clients criminal and medical records, it looked real fucking boring and shit until the two decided to log on to the computer. The password to log in was literally password, and inside the computer were many very serious lawyering documents and also an ass blisteringly massive file titled 'sgrub, DO NOT RUN AS EXE.'

The Makara boys looked at each other, it was obvious they'd have to run it as an EXE. With a shrug, Gamzee ran the file as am exe. Instead of doing what you expected it to do, it ran the computer so hot that the screen cracked and the device caught fire. 

"Oh." Gamzee said. 

"Oh". Kurloz also said. 

"HONK!" Gamzee screamed, then ran back to the ground floor. Kurloz grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the molten heap of plastic before it caught the rest of the room, like a responsible adult, before following.

On the ground floor, Eridan and Kanaya had broken into a shitty slap fight and were rolling around on the ground whining and hitting eachother with their limp hands. Tavros occasionally rolled out of their way moaning "uhhhhhhhhhh" as he failed to understand what he could do to deescalate the situation.

"Tavros have you tried asking these motherfuckers to stop?" Kurloz asked calmly. He shook his head, but the presence of other people in the room embarrassed the two sufficiently as to make them stop. 

"Yeah!" Kanaya yelled, deciding that she'd won somehow. "Don't try me again little man." Eridan wibbled his lip and made big sad eyes at his defeat, which despite not being real he couldn't argue hadn't happened. 

"Alright good." Kurloz nodded. "More motherfuckers killing motherfuckers is the last thing this creepy house needs." 

"HONK!" Gamzee agreed. 

They were interrupted by a triumphant scream from the basement, where someone must have finally found a bolt cutter.


	16. The creepy sub basement

By the time the kids from upstairs had carried Tavros downstairs with them, the kids who were downstairs already had snapped the padlock off the creepy basement room. "Dope", "lit!", "yeeyee", and "nice" were among the things kids yelled as Jake broke through that shit with his fantastic mangrit. 

"Oh no! The secret room!" Eridan squealed with horror. 

"HELL YEAH THE SECRET ROOM!" Mituna squealed while pumping his fists in delight. 

"Calm down babe it's just potatoes", Latula said flatly. The kids looked into the room as the dust leveled, indeed seeing some potatoes. 

"Nobody padlocks their potatoes." Dave said, busting into the room to find another door. "It's s fucking tunnel." He announced. "A tunnel with many potatoes." 

"Maybe we want to protect our vast subterranean empire of potatoes." Eridan said, still totally in denial that he'd eaten people. 

"Uh, no, you don't, because potatoes aren't fucking valuable." Roxy said. 

"Just ignore him or he's gonna debate us." Rose warned. 

"Itsh totally ok if he do, Cronus used to. I can win." Mituna explained. 

"No you can't babe", Latula said dismissively. 

"I can you'll see." Tuna winked. 

"Uh whatever guys I'm going in the tunnel now so uh come with me?" Dave requested. Most of the kids went inside immediately, except for Gamzee, Tavros and Kurloz.

"I'm gonna say that's a hard pass." Kurloz said immediately. "My black guy horror movie instincts are telling me to go home and mind my business." He nodded sternly to emphasize his point. "Gamzee ain't going either. Let's go home bro." 

"I don't think it's wheelchair accessable." Tavros said. 

"No it is, it's fairly flat in here and we can help you turn around, it's pretty wide. I think you can do it by yourself if you have to." Dave said. 

"Oh. Alright!" The boy said, then wheeled into the tunnel. 

"Honk!" Gamzee announced, following Tavros. 

"No! Gamzee! Stop! Get out of that spooky tunnel!" Kurloz called after him. 

"HONK!" Gamzee said again, his voice echoing and more distant.

Kurloz stared into the abyss. "You didn't even bring a motherfucking flashlight Gamzee! It's dark!" He said with a whimper. 

"Honk!" Gamzee honked. 

"Bro please, I don't wanna go home and have to tell momma you ain't coming because you followed a bunch of white children into a spooky serial killer's basement tunnel." 

"THEN GET IN HERE BRO!" He yelled with incredible volume. 

Kurloz sighed, shook his head and entered the spooky tunnel, but only after taking one of the Ampora family's battery powered camping lanterns. He followed the fresh footsteps of the children, brushing in front of himself for spiderwebs the much shorter kids wouldnt have soaked up for him with their own hair. "You kids dead up there?" He asked. Gamzee honked reassuringly in the distance. "Ok!" He said, continue to brush gingerly forward so spiders wouldn't bite him. Finally, Kurloz rounded a corner and caught up to the other kids at a second padlocked door. 

"Your potatoes must be really valuable." Rose taunted Eridan. "Two whole padlocks." 

"Yeah there's definitely a dead girl in there." Mituna insisted. 

"What if there's a live girl in there?" Kanaya asked. 

"We don't keep girls in our basement." Eridan insisted.

Jake said nothing and hit the padlock with his huge pair of bolt cutters. They pried open the door to find crudely made living quarters with their own bathroom, lounge and bedroon area. 

"See? It's a bomb shelter, my family isn't creepy and they're gonna find my dad innocent and send him home." Eridan said. "Please exit my personal private house that is not open for thrillseeking haunted tours at once."

"Bomb shelters are still creepy." Mituna said. 

Rose immediately began poking around for clues. 

"Gamzee, can we leave?" Tavros asked. 

"NO." A spooky female voice responded, and the door back out to the tunnel slammed. An apparition appeared in the middle of the living room. It was Damara Medigo, who nobody had seen for a year and a half. With a weeaboo screech, she started fucking shit up all over the living room, throwing tables, dvds and board games around with her ghostly malevolence. 

"WOAH dude fuck chill out!" Mituna screamed at her. 

"NO!" She screeched with a banshee pitch. 

"How can we appease you spirit?" Rose asked. 

"I want TACO BELL!" She hollered.

"Taco bell?" Latula asked. "Not justice for your murder?"

"Not to ritualistically murder your abuser's son on the coffee table?" Rose asked.

"Not for us to cut off his penis and slow cook it then enjoy it as a tasty treat while you watch approvingly?" Kanaya asked. Eridan scowled and clasped his hands over his weewee defensively. 

"NO!" Damara said, stomping her foot. "You guys are creepy. Just take me to taco bell. I'm really hungry." 

"Wait, you mean your body?" Eridan asked. 

"No!" Damara screamed. "Leave my crusty skeleton in a cemetery somewhere or something, I don't care I just need to eat tacos!" 

"I found the skull!" Jake hollered excitedly from another room. 

"Ooh my GAWD." Damara facepalmed. 

"Can I put it in my baackpack?" He asked. 

"I literally just said that was fine!" Damara screamed in response. Jake loaded her remains into his backpack and the whole group headed back through the tunnel to go to taco bell after having singlehandedly destroyed almost all of the evidence the cops hadn't seen yet without trying. As they left with all their stomping feet, the fragile earthen tunnel collapsed. 

"Wow, good thing none of us were still in there." Dave said with relief. 

"Just looks like a normal root cellar now!" Roxy exclaimed. 

"If only there were a way to tell people this had been here so the police could have caught Eridan's dad for the murder." Rose lamented. 

"Like minding your own business and letting the police find it themselves like they would have if none of us had come here?" Kurloz asked. 

"It's ok, I'll leave a signal for the police when they come back." Kanaya said. "This is the singular only thing I like for them to do, catching murderers." She spray painted 'there used to be a tunnel here but we collapsed it with our clumsy boots! Our bad.' 

Damara's ghost crossed her arms over her chest. "Yeah that definitely conveys that a girl died there. They'll definitely find it now." 

Kanaya looked sheepish and added an arrow.

"Sooo much better." Damara said. 

"Well anyway ladies and gentlemen thank you for visiting the Ampora household I appreciate all you've done for my family but it is time to get the fuck out now." Eridan stated, gesturing up the stairs to the distant door. 

"Come get toxic hell with us fatass." Mituna said shakily. "Be normal for once." 

"I'm on a diet." Eridan snapped. 

"Your mom's not here kid, we're not gonna tell on you." Latula said with a wink. 

"I have chosen on my own to be on this diet." Eridan said firmly. 

"Taco bell is uh... somewhat accomidating. We can read the menu and you could still come." Tavros insisted as Kurloz carried him back up the stairs. 

"Ugh. Fine. I'll eat poor people food with y'all." He sneered. 

The children took the ghost to taco bell, and posted a bunch of pictures of themselves eating with her. She and Rose took several individual pics, and and few with Kanaya. Eridan unintentionally photobombed every picture and then asked for the photographer to delete them because he thought he looked too fat. The children caught up with Damara about why they hadn't looked for her, explaining they all had assumed she'd become a foreign exchange student and run away to Japan forever.

After they'd left the neighborhood, the police resumed their work looking for evidence at the now janked up and destroyed Ampora household, which the children had selfishly destroyed in order to sate their own curiosity. 

Finally, Damara turned to the group, satisfied with her offerings of tacos and festivity. "So how's my family doing? How's my little sister Aradia?" She asked. All the kids looked at each other with awkward sadness. Gamzee spoke up at last. 

"Yeah theyre also dead." 

"What?" Damara asked.

"Yeah they're fucking dead." He repeated. " bad car accident on the way to midnight mass last christmas."

"What?!" Damara shrieked with glee. "You mean I can see them and it won't be weird?" She asked. 

All the kids looked at each other again with confusion, except Rose who's eyes watered with happiness. She clasped her hands as the dead girls outlook warmed her heart. 

"Yeah I guess." Gamzee said. "honk!" 

"Wait what about my baby?" She asked. 

"You were pregnant?" Latula asked incredulously. 

"Yeah that's why I dropped out of school and nobody saw me for like six months before I got kidnapped and died" she responded. 

"We have no idea what happened to the baby." Kurloz stated. 

"Yeah I didn't even know there was a baby." Tavros said with alarm.

"I don't even know who you are." Rose asserted.

"Uh hi I'm Damara, I was teen pregnant and had to drop out of school and put my baby up for adoption and I hope she's doing good out there. I had a court case against my rapist when I was kidnapped and murdered!" she said with a sarcastic wave. "Anyway I guess I've got to go figure that out myself. Alright bye!" Damara's ghost unraveled and presumably went to the adoption agency or something. The kids came to the agreement that it was weird and that they probably wouldnt be able to do anything about it even though it was really obvious someone should give an anonymous tip to the police about Mr. Ampora maybe having murdered people he had a connection to through the legal system or his choosing vulnerable girls.


	17. Lil' Cal

Here we are, back at Dave and Cronus in Dirk's room trying to retrieve the doll formerly known as Repressed Memory Emilio, now blinged out with hip hop fashions and a gold tooth and operating under the moniker lil' Cal, but now with the knowlege that some dumb dickhole ran sgrub. 

Cronus shifted from one foot to the other, gesturing to Dirk hopefully with both index fingers. "So can part of your new found love for lil cal involve never, ever exposing him to the Makara family? Or to Jane, also? Like just in case. Oh, and Feferi and her creepy mom. But especiallt not Jake. Like, never ever Jake for any discenable reason at all." 

"I mean no." Dirk said. "I kinda want to show lil' Cal to everybody. I want everyone to see his creepy awkward magnificence." 

"I already do not like him" Dave said. "I feel like he might be uh... bad."

"That's ok bro. You don't need him anyway. Lots of dudes out there need to take themself a gander at Lil' Cal." Dirk shrugged. 

"Actually I'd really prefer if you kept lil' Cal to yourself and a few close friends, like other sensitive material. You know, like a dick pic, or your friend's nudes. Just look at him in private with people you trust." Cronus said with a happy nod. 

"What if I want to show Cal to people I don't trust?" He asked.

"Uhhh" Dave moaned in confusion. 

"Please do not do that." Cronus insisted. 

"Wait can we talk about how you said you have your friend's nudes and show them to people you trust?" Dave interjected. 

"I never said that, it was just an example." Cronus insisted. "Why would anyone have their friend's nudes?" 

"Who's nudes are they?" Dave asked. 

"Guh fine stop being gross Dave it's Mituna's nudes. I have Mituna's nudes from before the accident." 

"Why do you have Mituna's nudes?" Dirk asked. 

"I don't know, I think he was confused and sent them to the wrong person but he never asked me to delete them either so I don't know what's really going on." Cronus said, shifting from one foot to another. "It doesn't matter he probably doesn't remember. Let's talk about Cal and who not to show him to." Cronus asserted, crossing his arms, " which is everyone." 

"I thought I could show him to people I'd trust with important things like my dic pics or my friend's nudes." Dirk said, an eyebrow raising high enough to become visible despite his shades. 

"Yeah." Dave said. "People need to see cal." 

"Nobody needs to see Cal." Cronus insisted. "In fact, Cal doesn't need to exist. I'm gonna solve this." Cronus lit a match he reserved for the cigarettes he carried around but never smoked and flung it across the room at Cal. It missed and landed in a pile of smuppets. 

"Oh fuck", all three boys grunted. The smuppets began smoking lightly. 

"Do you guys have a fire extinguisher?" Cronus asked. Dave just started stomping on the pile of smuppets to try to put the plush fabric out. Dirk forcefully removed Cronus from the house, grabbing him by the shirt collar and dragging him down the stairs. 

"Hey, we're not finished." Cronus insisted. "We got to sort out this Cal bullshit before I go anywhere!" He whimpered. 

"Cronus, you almost set my house on fire. You are hereby banished to the streets on punishment of the police getting called if you come here ever again." Dirk forced him closer to the door. 

Dave screamed "I concur" from the top of the stairs. The kids ridiculousness was interrupted suddenly by a deafening boom. They all stopped fighting and ran to the window to see what happened, only to see a huge meteor crater. All three of them screamed with the horrible knowlege of exactly what this meant and the fact that none of them had initiated a session. The three boys ran outside to see the sky absolutely full of meteors... which were frozen in mid air, glitching in and out of view lazily. 

"Uhh", Dave said. 

"Yeah, uhh." Cronus said. 

The boys stared as none of the remaining meteors hit the earth and all of them blinked out of view. 

"Oh, whew, ok. We won't get annihilated afterall, crisis averted. Please let me destroy Cal so there is absolutely no chance of this happening again." Cronus said with releif. 

"Lil cal cannot be created or destroyed." Dirk insisted.

"Sure he can, fire is fire no matter what's up. I got matches. Gimme that doll." 

"NO!" Dirk yelled. He grabbed his shirt by the back and threw Cal to Dave, then tossed his shirt onto the ground to indicate it was time to tussle. Unwillingly, Cronus threw his shirt on the ground too. 

"Alright fine I guess we're gonna have the first real fistfight in this fucking story now." Cronus whined, raising his fist and preparing to fight. Dirk ran in to punch at him, but Cronus whipped out a pepper spray and naIled him in the face. Unfortunately, sunglazed do not protect you from pepper spray, and Dirk rolled around on the ground like a little bitch. "HA! OL' CRONUS DID A SNEAKY ON YA!" He yelled. 

"Why the fuck do you have pepper spray?" Dave asked. 

"So I don't get my face beaten in. My handsomeness is literally my only redeeming quality." He said with a smile. 

"Shouldn't you work on your personality since you know you're going to get medically untreatable resting bitch face as an adult?" Dave asked while Dirk just squirmed around on the pavement.

"What?" Cronus asked, halfway down the street already in an attempt to outrun the truth of Dave's statement. 

"I SAID YOU'VE GOT TO WORK ON YOUR PERSONALITY, RBF IS GONNA GET YOUR FACE!" Dave yelled after him. Cronus got six blocks away from the strider lalonde household before he realized he had left without Cal. 

"Shit!" He said, bending over at the waist and wiping the sweat from his forehead. He turned around and looked back at the street behind him. "Why the fuck did I leave? I could have wrenched the fucking doll away from that little baby man by now." 

"DAVE!" He bellowed. "I'M COMING BACK!" He pointed forward and resumed running back toward the house he had just stupidly run away from, but by the time he got back, Kankri was sitting with his car parked in their driveway.

"Hey. Dave called me and told me you threw a match into a pile of plush toys and pepper sprayed his brother so you could destroy a doll. I'm obviously very concerned, please get in the car with me." Kankri insisted, looking handsome with his nice new haircut. 

"Dude no, I actually have to get rid of the doll," Cronus insisted. "I know you won't understand, but it's extremely important." 

"The only thing I don't understand is why the neighborhood had a meteor impact, it's very obvious you're having one of your outbursts and that we're going to have to get you some psychiatric attention to figure out exactly what all this..." He gestured all over Cronus's body "is symptomatic of so we can get you some medication." 

"I don't need medication Kankri I need to defeat the evil doll to protect this universe!" Kankri nodded but had a revealing look on his face that made it very obvious he was not taking Cronus seriously. "EY DAVE!" He yelled. "I really trust Kankri. Come show Lil Cal to Kankri!" 

"I thought you didn't want us to show him to people we wouldn't trust with our friend's nudes." Dave yelled out the window. 

"Yeah, you made it very clear that lil cal is like a dic pic and I shouldn't show him to anybody." Dirk hollered. 

"If you show Kankri the doll I'll show you the nudes!" Cronus screamed in desperation. 

Dirk and Dave were at the door in seconds, bearing Cal. 

"Nudes first." Dirk said creepily. 

"This has absolutely no benefit to Cronus's mental health." Kankri insisted. Cronus obediently unlocked his phone and held it up for the strider boys to see. He revealed Mituna's nudes for them. 

"Aww man!" Dirk whined. " I thought he had two wieners. Now I'm going to be disappointed for the rest of my life." 

"I mean I see why Latula stays though he was like really cut for a tenth grader." Dave commented. "If he got back to the gym after he finished physical therapy he probably looks pretty alright." 

"Why on earth would he have two wieners?" Cronus asked. No one answered him. "Yeah anyway show Kankri the doll." 

Dirk nodded to Dave and they both ran to the car to get Kankri, pulling him out and locking him into their guest room with the horrible toy and an assortment of smuppets.

"Not only is this devoid of therapeutic value for Cronus's severe mental illness, you're in the process of afflicting me with a mental illness as result of your strange and questionable behavior." Kankri whined from his prison. 

"Look at the doll!" Dirk yelled. "He's awesome!"

"Is this why Cronus is wacked out you guys?" Is it because you locked him in a room with the smuppets and this creepy doll?" Kankri asked. 

"It's the remains of Repressed Memory Emilio!" Cronus said.

"Oh. Oh wow. Dirk, this is, exceptionally strange for you to have done to the therapeutic toy that was supposed to help Cronus stop wiling out and acting wack. Why is he an eighties urban caricature now?" Kankri asked. 

"Please just use him for his intended purpose." Cronus insisted. 

"Cronus, I don't have any repressed memories." Kankri insisted. "I accepted all my trauma and dealt with most of it in health ways." He lied unintentionally. 

"Just appreciate lil cal please. He exists to be appreciated." Dirk insisted. 

Kankri grew quiet in the room. The three boys waited outside until they realized Kankri was probably using the doll to learn about homestuck. Dirk was enthused that his recreation of lil cal was reaching out to another helpless mind so he'd have someone to talk to about his bogus adventure. Dave was excited to have someone else believe his conspiracy theories and maybe find a satisfying resolution for the readers. Cronus was excited he wouldn't have to go to the mental hospital for trying to destroy lil cal and could try again later. The three boys went to play video games while they waited for Kankri to know about homestuck. Finally he emerged from the room three hours later with a disappointed and glazed look. 

"Alright you guys, I appreciated the fucking doll. Can I please take Cronus and go home now?" He asked. 

"Did you learn anything about yourself?" Dirk asked. Kankri nodded yes. 

"Do you wanna help us on our quest to make a lot of people look at Cal?" Dave ssked. 

"No thanks, hard pass." Kankri said. 

"Aww." Dave whined. 

"Rats." Dirk also whined. 

"Alright Cronus, let's go home." Kankri mumbled, dragging him out by the hand. 

Once they got to the car Cronus asked what had happened to lil cal. Kankri handed him a pile of stuffing and his dismembered head.


	18. The Orphaner doesn't get executed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cronus's shitty dad survives because of the shitty economy
> 
> tw: the humor in this chapter will be fucking abominable. I'm going to make fun of the Greek economic crash. If you're offended by that, why not the rest of the story? I'm genuinely curious. How did you make it this far? If you're sensitive about the value of human life and really gross statements coming from a cannibal are going to bother you, I don't actually know how you're all the way on chapter 18 of this story congratulations but anyway get out this one's not your chapter

After being processed through a series of jail cells and airplanes where he had to figure out how to use the in flight bathroom with his hands cuffed behind his back and the express knowlege that his transporters would not hold his weenie while he peed (he'd asked several times), Elias Ampora finally ended up extradited all the way back to Greece for being a serial murdering cannibal piece of shit. He stood before almost all of the shit he had expected to see in the event he got caught for his heinous crimes, and a handful of shit that he didn't. All the angry police, his weeping, sobbing and inconsolable defense lawyer, his excited, ravenous and malevolently energetic prosecutor, the exasperated and horrified judge, and a genuinely disgusted, bloodthirsty jury were all present in the crumbling economically deprived courtroom, but so was a director affiliated with absolutely no news network, boom lights, and a bunch of cameras. A dude immediately took a picture of him.

the judge looked down on him with fury he would not be able to act upon that day. "Mr. Ampora, I have terrible, horrible, atrocious news. While everyone in this room including your defense lawyer would absolutely love to murder you ourselves, none of us will be able to do so, I can't condemn you to death. Giving you the death penalty is way, way more expensive than letting this student director shoot a bunch of videos of us pretending to give you the death penalty and then sending you back to America with fake papers declaring a new identity, so unfortunately this court has to do that instead, God rest our souls." he said, but in Greek. Many of the people in the courtroom made religious gestures and mumbled. They all spoke Greek, because it was Greece. "Please prepare to say some crazy, condemnable shit for your initial fake trial and await your fake sentence, then get ready to film your next fake appeal after lunch. For the record, this court has decided you don't get to eat lunch with us, because the flesh of all those girls you murdered should be enough to keep you full until you get to hell." Elias nodded and acted ashamed, but had already seen the catered sliced sub sandwich platter and cooler full of fizzy drinks and already knew he was just going to fucking steal some. He was absolutely, definitely sneaky enough to steal a fucking sub, and this decision did not concern him in the slightest.

He took a seat in the defendant's chair and prepared himself to do fake court things so he could get this over with and go back to his wife and singular good son that he actually loved as long as said son hadn't shot up the school because girls didn't like him and commit suicide to escape from the ensuing jail sentence by the time he returned. He thanked every god he could think of that the entire courtroom had failed to realize it was even cheaper for one of them to murder him in front of the entire courtroom and then immediately go on trial and have the judge give them an extremely light sentence. The judge slammed his gavel a couple times, and everyone in the room scowled except for Elias, who smiled for the first time since his horrible shitty mistake son Cronus got to be about 13 and started acting like a supremo fuckaroonie and just pissing him off every goddamn second of the day. People were able to look at him without squinting, and the general area around him ceased to resemble a silent hill set. The varnish on the table in front oh him un-crackled itself, the paint on the walls un-peeled and fit itself neatly back into its original smooth configuration, the ceiling tiles scootched back into a nice orderly pattern with none of them hanging at strange angles, and all the pipes stopped leaking horrible rusty water into black puddles on the floor. And the puddles? they straight fucked off, evaporation or something. Without the paint-peeling scowl, he just looked almost exactly like Eridan or Cronus, except like 20 years older and belonging to a different subspecies of dweeb. 

The judge nodded to the cameraman, and one of his friends dressed as a reporter began to read off a script, explaining the names of the victims, the last time they were seen, and where their bodies were finally discovered after receiving an anonymous tip from someone in the United States. He held up a series of pictures of the victims, all of them single mothers of young children. "Elias Ampora," the judge began, but in Greek, "You stand before this court today accused of 17 counts of first degree murder, 17 counts of desecration of human remains, and 12 counts of aggravated tittyfucking."

Elias interrupted the judge. "Aggravated? No, I was extremely happy. You can't charge me with aggravated tittyfucking, your honor. I contest this charge." Jurors gasped and clasped their hands over their mouths.

"Aggravated refers-" the judge began, but Mr. Ampora was not hearing it.

"Yes, to the state of aggravation, a feeling comparable to anger, which I promise you I did not feel in the slightest while I was fucking those titties. If you're going to put an adjective on the tittyfucking to describe how it went, aggravated is as far from the truth as you could possibly get. Jubilant tittyfucking, perhaps. Joyous tittyfucking, appreciative tittyfucking, amorous tittyfucking. But aggravated; I am afraid not. I must request you stop defaming my character in such a way." Members of the jury openly threw pieces of paper at him and hollered from their chairs that they were gonna choke him out.

the judge began again, obviously frustrated. "Because of the victim's unwilling dispositions and the fact that it was done without their consent, and due to the use of force, we have decided to charge you with aggravatred tittyfucking. Do you accept the charges?"

"Absolutely not, have you ever seen an aggravated titty? Whether the so-called victims consented or not, I promise you that not a single titty i fucked was aggravated. Titties, your honor, cannot be aggravated- they are among the happiest body parts. Their entire existence is focused around bouncing, it brings them joy your honor. I made those titties happy. I did them a service." The judge slammed his gavel repeatedly to command order in the courtroom, his face red and his urge to kill rising. Everyone gathered in the court room stared with disdain at Mr. Ampora, but he smiled brightly because he realized the entire room was too chickenshit to do anything about him even though he had handcuffs on. Despite the knowlege that the country was probably too poor to send them to jail, everyone just sat there not trying to murder him like a doofus. The first trial continued in this way until the judge declared Mr. Ampora could come back when he'd take the court seriously and pretended to end the first fake trial. Everyone broke for lunch.

Watching them all eat, Elias looked down at his slide-on lawyering loafers, each decoratively displaying an American 1944 steel minted wheat penny. Tucking his lips between his teeth and making a goofy focus face, he slipped off each loafer and then took off his socks with his toes, freeing his stinky three days on planes and in jail feet. He waved his feeties a little bit to air them out, then wiped them against his pants on his shins, and scooted carefully on his butt while people in the room were conversing until he was close enough to the platter, looking away and acting inconspicuous every time someone in the room noticed him moving. Finally, he watched everyone carefully, then grabbed a sandwich segment by wedging it between the balls of both his feet. He brought it to his mouth somewhat strenuously, thankful for every yoga class he let his wimpy but lovable wife take him to, and coincidentally thankful for about the thirtieth that he didn't fucking eat her since if he had she'd never have taken him to yoga classes, and he'd be deprived of this stolen sandwich. Satisfied and in need of a little drink, he slid over to the little styrofoam cooler, waited, and tactically kicked it open, wedging a Three Cents™ pink grapefruit soda between his feet like he had the sandwich and hiding it behind the cooler. Realizing that opening a fizzy drink is loud, he scooted back over to the table everyone was eating at, edged his way under, and forced himself to fart. He nearly shat his pants, which would have been a tragedy, as these were his only pants. Fortunately, his gamble paid off, and all the courtroom staff decided to go outside and wait for it to air out. He rapidly buttscooted back to the cooler, opened his pop, took a drink, then buttscooted back to the sandwiches to have some more. Two bites into his third sandwich, the courtroom crew started to come back in. He froze in place, his mouth open, his sandwich in his feets. 

"Are you eating a sandwich with your fucking feet?" the student cameraman asked, zooming in on the depravity. 

"No." he stated, not moving an inch- his face centimeters from a clearly bitten sandwich wedged between his bare feet. 

"Are you completely positive? Because it seems like you're using your feet to eat sandwiches, and that might be the grossest thing I've ever seen."

Elias bristled at the accusation. "Feet aren't gross. Do you know how many feet I've eaten?" The cameraman stared and said nothing, disgusted in so many directions that it was fucking disorienting. "the answer is none, pal, I don't eat things that I masturbate with." He resumed eating his sandwich from between his feet. Tears ran silently from the cameraman's eyes as the situation spontaneously evoked a crying response, his endocrine system triggered out of sheer confusion as his brain scrambled for what to do with this information. The entire courtroom crew gathered around and the judge patted the student cameraman on the shoulder reassuringly. 

"So he touched all our food with his feet?" one of the jurors whispered to another. The second one shrugged.

"No, I only touched my food. I'm a good boy, I'm considerate." Elias replied. "The rest of them are fine."

Members of the sad gagglefuck looked at eachother. They all decided lunch was over. Elias slithered back into his socks and shoes, backed up to his soda and grabbed it with his cuffed hands, setting it on the table so he could continue to drink it after they resumed filming his fake court sessions. He resisted the charge of aggravated tittyfucking until the bitter end, taking umbrage with the wording until he was finally given his fake death sentence. He winked at the camera and stuck his tongue out during the last shot of his face in the courtroom. To his surprise, a few of the jurors grabbed him and dragged him into a small, medical cell looking area and strapped him to a table. The Cameraman sauntered over and filmed him kicking and screaming. "What the fuck!" he screamed repeatedly. "I thought we couldn't afford to kill me because we're too poor, what the fuck?!" he hollered, weeping. "I thought the economy was too broken and there was too much debt, why am I getting executed! I demand a fair trial!" he whined. 

The judge walked in wearing a doctor suit and asked the Cameraman to stop filming for a minute, which he did. The judge held up a chinese-made candy syringe filled with green apple liquid candy and peeled off the sticker carefully. "Alright, I'm gonna kill you now. Do me a favor and pretend to die." he said. Elias nodded, ceasing his protest immediately. 

"What does it look like when people don't die of aggravated tittyfucking? I've never seen that before." he asked. The judge unleashed a long, pitchy scream while his eyes bugged out of his head. "What, I was serious." he reiterated. The judge popped a blood vessel in his face screaming. Finally, he composed himself, had the cameraman turn back on, and proceeded to read off the screed doctors have to give when they kill a motherfucker. Elias winked at the camera, said "owie" as the doctor squirted green liquid candy into the crook of his elbow, then waited about five minutes and pretended to have a violent seizure, falling still with one eye open and his tongue lolling out to announce his 'death'. 

The cameraman stood with his jaw locked uncomfortably, in stoic silence, until he stopped filming. "Could you uh... have done a better job? I mean I've never seen someone die before and you have, but like, I feel like a fourth grader might have done a better job. Can we take another shot?" 

Elias looked incredulous, then glared at the man. "Uh, I'm the expert on what dead people look like buddy, and I looked extra dead."

The fake doctor and real judge sighed, checked his watch, and palmed his face. "No, we can't. It's almost five, I can't afford to have any of you guys stick around, we need to turn the lights and air conditioning off and get out of this building. We have to send him home, go get some dinner and try not to think about this day ever again." The cameraman nodded and left with all his friends, if they were too broke they were too broke- he'd just have to edit everything in aftereffects until he looked deader. Everyone abruptly left the building, and two guys grabbed Mr. Ampora under the armpits and dragged him all the way to the airport. He had left New Jersey two days ago as Elias Ampora, serial murderer, only to return as Bob Burgerman, complete with fake food service creds and a fake deed to a restaurant situated in a condemned building downtown. He knew what he'd have to do. In the darkness of the night, he snuck back into his house to order supplies to repair his restaurant and start serving burgers to the hungry public. As he entered his study, he screamed with displeasure at the sight of his charred, melted and destroyed computer. 

"ERIDAN!" he yelled. "DID YOU TRY TO PLAY VIDEOGAMES ON PAPA'S COMPUTER!?" 

Eridan jolted out of bed and ran into the room in his jimmy jams. "Papa? Oh my god, I thought you were in Greece getting executed!" he tried to give the cranky man a big hug.

Elias spoke loudly, knowing that the rest of the family had definitely heard him and woken up and that if he was noisy enough now, everyone would eavesdrop and he wouldn't have to explain anything a second time later."No, Papa's home now, the nation of Greece cannot afford to execute me so they sent me home with a fake ID. I'm Bob Burgerman, we're the Burgemen now. I've got a restaurant, and we're gonna make burgers. I'm gonna grow a mustache so people don't know it's me! But you have to be honest with me, did you try to play games on Papa's business computer?"

Eridan stared at the computer. "Eww." he said. "It's all stinky and melty. No, papa, I did not ruin your computer. Somebody else must have done it, it was probably one of the kids who invaded our house while the police were here."

"Yes." Mr. Ampora said. "Papa can't do business on a stinky melty computer." He realized the police probably would have opened it and seen all his pictures of dead people, and realized that he'd probably been done a huge favor. "Eridan, I'm not mad. In fact, I'm actually really happy you wrecked the computer, even though you lied to me because you were shy, because it meant you kept the police out of Papa's personal business. We're going to dairy queen."

"YAAAAAAAY!" Eridan squealed. 

"IRENE! WAKE UP! A STRANGE MAN BROKE INTO YOUR HOUSE TO BUY YOU ICE CREAM!" Elias hollered. 

"YAAAAAY!" she squealed from the bedroom, running out in her nighty to come welcome her horrible cannibal husband back into her home. They hugged.

"MOM! GET UP WE'RE GETTING ICE CREAM!" he yelled again.

"YAAAAAAY!" yaya squealed from her bedroom. The family left to go get ice cream together before the Dairy Queen closed.


	19. Eridan's plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cronus gets a new job

It'd been an entire month since his stupid parents had opened a stupid burger restaurant to hide his stupid serial killer dad's stupid secret identity, and the business was fucking tanking. Eridan looked grumpily at the singular trio of customers they'd had since the place opened- Mr. Captor, Mrs. Serket and fucking bitchass Vriska, who he hated because she was hot but also fat and very fun to be around but also a terrible person. He wanted to fuck her, but also to make her understand what a terrible person she was. It was very complicated, and the only human templates for these feelings were "domestic abuse" or "dubiously consensual and poorly practiced bdsm" so Eridan genuinely preferred not to be in her company at all and focus on girls who didn't make him feel as if the goodness within him had died and decayed into a sticky, reeking black mass. However, this was the only restaurant in town that her mom would cheat on her dad in, since nobody would see her there. Every day, she ordered enough for three separate meals even though his pa couldn't cook, his mom and Yaya had no idea what made burgers delicious and as a result the food was terrible, and every day, Mr. Captor's delicate slender ass would sit there and watch her eat and only have a diet pepsi, and Vriska would get out her tablet and digitally color pictures of jacked anime characters who wouldn't date her if they were real while Eridan stood there at the register looking awkward re-counting the little money in the till and reviewing the receipts so his mom and yaya would assume he was busy and handle those three and their dumb demands. After two hours of her eating 'sexily', they'd leave and Vriska would continue to color, occasionally ordering fries or a mountain dew, until the restaurant closed. Finally, three days from the end of the month, he couldn't take it anymore- he had to get more people into this fucking restaurant so Vriska would fucking leave. 

"Yaya, come here." he beckoned. his yaya looked at him like she didn't understand, so he repeated himself, but in Greek. Yaya smiled and approached- she knew English, she just didn't want Eridan to forget his roots like Cronus so she pretended to be senile and forgetting her English. Both of them knew she was doing this, and they had the mutual understanding that it was probably a stupid waste of time, since it's not generally profitable to be able to translate Greek, so it barely mattered for employment reasons whether Eridan lost it and it was unlikely he'd ever return to Greece. He continued, now that she was closer. "Yaya, This restaurant fucking sucks, and I know exactly how to fix it. I need you to go distract your son and make sure he doesn't fry off his stupid moustache burning another patty and mom doesn't notice I left because she gets all weird thinking pedophiles are gonna kidnap me. I'm too old for pedophiles, yaya, by their standards I'm basically the cryptkeeper, and I'm too heavy. Pedophiles don't like fat kids, we're harder to carry and we don't fit into as many commercially available suitcases and bags. I'm gonna get help, I know a guy who can cook burgers."

Yaya nodded. "You're gonna go find Cronus."

"Yeah. I'm gonna go find Cronus. Cooking burgers and looking marketable are like, literally the only talents he has, at all. He's going to come back and use them for this shitty restaurant so I can go back upstairs and play call of duty like a normal child."

"Normal children have always worked, Eridan, your leisurely childhood is an anomaly created by a society that is strangely overprotective of and patronizing to children." Yaya interrupted.

"Either way, normal children my age are playing call of duty like, right now, Yaya, and I am not playing with them. Normal children are having fun and I'm watching a girl who makes me uncomfortable color 30 year old bodybuilder muscles on a character who is supposed to be a sixteen year old boy." he said. "I'm getting Cronus to restore order."

"Is that why you've been getting so skinny and spending all that time in the gym, Eridan? Are you starting to notice girls?" yaya cooed. 

"AUUUUGH! NO!" he screeched, forcefully removing his apron and slamming it on the coatrack. "I mean yes. But not for HER."

Yaya nodded in understanding. It was definitely for her. "You should ask her out." 

"AUUUUGH! NO YAYA! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" he said, storming off in a melodramatic huff.

She teetered closer to Vriska and looked over her shoulder so she could see her coloring Jotaro. "Hot damn", Yaya said, fanning her face. "no wonder Eridan's doing keto and pumping iron, this girl's standards are unfair!" 

"What are you talking about old lady?" Vriska asked disrespectfully. 

Yaya shrugged and pretended she only spoke Greek and didn't understand, asking in a very thick accent if she wanted a drink. Vriska narrowed her eyes and stared as if she'd crack and answer, but Yaya was a total pro at pretending not to know what was going on. "No drink? ok!" she said, then carried on with her sweeping and tidying of the empty restaurant. 

"I'm on to you. old woman." Vriska mumbled, returning to her diligent shading of Jotaro's massive muscles. Little did she know that she was, in fact, not on to Yaya Ampora. She would never within Yaya's lifetime catch up to Yaya Ampora, and she could only dream of being clever enough to be on to her. 

Outside, Eridan Naruto ran down the road to avoid getting overly wet because he had forgotten it was going to rain. While it was indeed proven by Harvard Mathematician David Bell that running in the rain kept you drier the faster you ran so long as either the wind was blowing in your face or the rain was falling vertically, and it had indeed been proven by researchers at the University of Michigan that Naruto running makes you faster, this didn't stop him from looking like a fucking idiot, nor did it stop everyone who witnessed his behavior from laughing at it. As several businesspeople on their way home from work fell flat on their asses laughing at his stupid behavior, he tucked into a pastry shop to text his good buddy Karkat without getting his screen all wet and fucking up his message. 'hey is my idiot brother still taking up valuable space at your house?' 

Karkat sighed heavily as his phone did a little beep beep to let him know he'd received a text message. Dave had been harassing him endlessly for the last six days, something about them being together in another universe and Kankri destroying his favorite doll. Karkat was unconcerned, and he scratched his ass with a grunt of disdain to express his message to the fellow denizens of his home about how he felt re: another text that was probably from Dave. Kankri nodded. Dr. Vantas (PHD) nodded. Cronus looked at him in bewilderment. "Karkat, why are you acting like a 40 year old man?"

Karkat released a long groan and flopped onto his side limply. Cronus continued. "Karkat, please. This is not productive. Just look at the text, and if it's from Dave, you can not answer him. Your complaints accomplish nothing except to prolong your suffering." In response, Karkat pulled a blanket over his face and rolled onto his belly. Cronus sighed. 

"You can't really stop Karkat from doing what he wants, even when what he wants is counterproductive." Kankri stated. 

"I mean you can, he just complains the whole time." Dr. Vantas (PHD) added. 

Cronus looked to Karkat, being lazy and shitty in his chair, and wondered what his crummy brother Eridan was doing. Now that it'd been long enough for him to cool off about all the times Eridan had irritated him with his vile personality, he'd started to miss the rude little skinbag of fucksauce. "Just look at the text, what if it's a girl?" he asserted. 

"Yeah what if it's jade?" Dr. Vantas (PHD) added. Karkat groaned again from under his covers and rolled into a little ball.

Meanwhile in the pastry shop, Eridan's mouth watered as he gazed upon a chocolate covered croissant. He stared at it longingly, and the shopkeep took notice. "Hey little buddy, you want a croissant?" he asked. 

with tears at the corners of his eyes, Eridan replied in a shaky voice. "I can't have one."

the shopkeep felt for him. "We have gluten free, little buddy. You can have a croissant here."

"I still can't have one" he said, weepily. 

"Why not little buddy?" the shopkeep asked sympathetically. 

"I'm tryna do keto because I'm such a fatty fat fatty and the girls don't like me at school." he sobbed. 

the shopkeep walked out from behind the counter to pat his shoulders sympathetically. "it gets better after the first week buddy, you won't even want a croissant."

"I been doin it for a whole month mister, but It turns out I really like carbs. I still wanna eat a croissant really bad. I'm a fatty." he whined. 

"Hey little buddy, it's OK!" the shopkeep assured. "You can eat carbs and lose weight, you just gotta do a lot of cardio."

Eridan whined again. "Im tryna get gains tho, so the girls will think I'm dashing and handsome like I imagine in my head. You can't get gains doin' a lot of cardio, there's a whole cycle you gotta do!"

the shopkeep nodded, then handed Eridan some cheese sticks wrapped in luncheon meats. "It's OK little buddy, I believe in you. You're gonna get there, and then you can come back to my shop and eat a croissant."

Eridan nodded and texted Karkat again, as he'd taken so long that he'd gone from his customary gaze at the pastries straight into weeping bitterly about his inability to consume them. 'Kar please, answer the texts or im gonna call your phone so you can hear my awesome custom ringtone i gave myself last time you left it unlocked in science class.'

The text sent, Eridan looked tearily upon a crueller with strawberry glaze. He wiped at his eyes with a napkin and ate his meat snacks, his finger hovering over the call button. Finally, he just fucking pushed it. Everyone in Karkat's house laughed at him as his phone started playing the cover of "fly me to the moon" used for Bayonetta at maximum volume. He crept away to answer it in another room after realizing it wasn't Dave trying to get his attention, but rather Eridan, the most annoying kid in school who also happened to insist they were friends. Despite his attempt at secrecy, Karkat yelled his greeting. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, ERIDAN?!" he bellowed, making everyone laugh at him again in the other room. 

"Woah Kar that was a lot of hostility for a guy who let me cry at the pastry place for like two goddamn hours and didn't answer his texts, what the fuck gives?" the poncy boy snapped.

Karkat took his phone from his ear to fact check. "Eridan you sent your first text fifteen minutes ago you impatient fuck. Why do you need to know if Cronus is still here?"

"My parents started a burger restaurant and it's bad, Kar. Nobody can cook a decent burger, we only sell fries, we get like five customers a day and three of them are Vriska's mom, and she only comes here because it's empty so no one can see her. I gotta fix this shit, and Cronus, idiot that he is, can make nice burgers. I think he can save the restaurant, and I want him to come help."

Karkat gave his butt a scritch to soothe his aggitation. "Eridan, what do you mean, parents? You only have the one parent."

"STOP REMINDING ME OF MY TRAGEDY, KAR." Eridan screeched. 

"Alright, sorry. Why does Cronus have to fix this? I don't think it's his responsibility after what he told us all about the basement." Karkat continued, itching his rump.

"What the fuck did he tell you about the basement? He moved there willingly because there was a toilet, microwave, minifridge and space for a bed so he could hide down there and not talk to my pa because they hate eachother. Anything he told you about the basement is a fucking lie, Karkat." Eridan ranted rapidly.

"He told us the basement locked from the outside and you guys would lock him down there whenever your parents were mad at him which was often, whenever you had company and sometimes just for fun." Karkat stated with irritation.

"Oh. Yeah that's actually the truth then. Sorry I went off, my b. Anyway it's his responsibility because he took off and left me, his only brother, with these dysfunctional fucknuts, sent our breadwinner to jail and bankrupted the family." Eridan insisted.

"All of those sound like they're not Cronus's problems." Karkat said firmly.

"No they are, because I, his precious only brother, am super mad at him and our rich brotherly bond may permanently dissolve over his callous actions making me poor and putting me in regular contact with Vriska."

"This still doesn't sound like it's Cronus's problem. I think he already made his choices, buddy." 

"THEN HOW AM I GONNA GET VRISKA OUT OF MY RESTAURANT!?" he screamed, needlessly upset with the situation. 

"I guess you're gonna have to find someone who can cook burgers and convince your mom and her new boyfriend to hire that person as a cook, my dude. Leave your brother out of this." Karkat said, giving his butt another scritch and hanging up the phone. As he turned around, he saw Cronus standing behind him.

"Hey I heard someone needed a dude to make burgers and that money was involved." Cronus said. Karkat stared at him.

"It's your family, you'd be working in a kitchen with them, with tons of knives and open flames, in a place where accidents are known to happen." Karkat replied. "That's a terrible decision to make considering everything happening with you and your family dynamic."

"I can't do any more surgery, Karkat. I'm terrible at it and I prettymuch hate everything about the human body, and I'm literally always exhausted. The inside of the human body is disgusting even when it's intact, Karkat, and it gives me nightmares to think about the states of disrepair I have witnessed within it. Did Eridan mention how much they were paying?" Cronus said, twitching a bit.

"Eridan said absolutely nothing about payment or money and that the restaurant was tanking, so I would assume you will not get paid." Karkat said with a shrug. "Cronus, this is a terrible idea, If you like cooking burgers there are hundreds of restaurants you could cook at instead, and all of them probably have openings for frycooks."

"I mean, like, I'd be cooking their menu though- if my family's restaurant is this shitty, I can cook my own menu and everyone just has to suck my dick and let it happen." he said. "Honestly this'd be a fun job, I should take it. I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna go in disguise, you know, for my own safety, and get paid under the table with a fake identity so the government doesnt find out what a doucher genius I'm being sneaking around my own angry family and taking their cash. Who's locked in the basement now, mom? NO ONE, AS IT SHOULD BE YOU MONSTER." 

"Pride is a deadly sin, Cronus." Karkat said with a sad shake of his head. He patted him on the back and retired to the sofa to continue grumbling and scratching his butt like a 40 year old man.

"You should get that itch checked out my dude, it might be ringworm or something. Hey Kankri? Kankri? Come here buddy I need help I'm gonna do a disguise." Cronus announced, beckoning Kankri to come assist him.


	20. Cronus uses his only talent for profit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He only has one (1) marketable skill

Cronus approached the restaurant in his extremely clever disguise that nobody would ever be able to identify- his old glasses he had stopped wearing because they made him look like a nerd, a dearth of hair grease, and a ridiculous outfit from the thrift store that included a fringed leather vest and cowboy boots that squeaked every time he took a step. His fluffy mop of curls was free to blow dashingly in the wind or puff into a tangled ball shape of disappointment in the face of even slightly humid weather. He had his fake resume, labeling himself Milo Greeknameopolous and claiming to be 26 years old with fifteen years experience as a celebrity chef for food Network. He strode into the restaurant with all the same confidence Peter Parker had that nobody at his newspaper factory would notice that they had never seen him and Spiderman in the same room. "Hello Ampora family!" He screeched shrilly. "I'm here to save your restaurant, because someone called the food Network and said it sucked, just like, so bad. It is literally the worst restaurant ever." 

The Ampora family members looked amongst themselves as if to confirm that they could all fucking tell it was Cronus, which every one of them could. He continued with his act regardless. "I, the amazing chef Milo, am here to take over your shitstank Burger joint. I have brought some of my own food on the assumption you bought a bunch of those premade patties at fucking Walmart to try to pass off as real food, and I'm headed to the kitchen now." He handed the resume to his father and his shitty mustache disguise before squeaking flamboyantly into the kitchen with his big bag of ground steak, fresh toppings and high quality buns.

Eridan looked at Yaya with concern, as if silently asking for help. Yaya looked at her daughter in law with a face of blame, as if it were Irene's genes that made her poor grandson Cronus a frothing lunatic rather than the ones from her shitty serial killer son. Elias stared at Cronus with the brutal fires of impending violence flickering in his murderous serial killer pupils. Irene just looked out into space, regretting every decision she had ever made in her entire life, starting with the moment Elias had introduced himself to her by explaining that he was a sociopath and that all his friends kept trying to explain to him that it was not way to introduce himself to a woman, and she had responded by explaining that the term was outdated and that if he really were a 'sociopath' he'd have a long record with the police starting with animal abuse in childhood and wouldn't be meeting her at a law school's orientation program as a respectable and not imprisoned member of society. As she looked at her idiot son, she wished she had just thrown her drink on him for being creepy and decided to go to another college instead of getting pregnant by him in the closet twenty minutes after winning the argument that he wasn't sociopathic, only misanthropic. Unfortunately, the second thing had happened due to her incredibly poor judgement of character, and the fetus he yeeted into her young, naieve and unsuspecting womb was Cronus, who was now the idiot ruining her kitchen with his wild west attire.

Vriska peeked up from her busy work shading and contouring the muscles of yoked highschoolers, witnessing the spectacle before her. She immediately texted literally every other student at her middle school who had ever made the mistake of giving someone else their phone number in front of her, as well as leaving a speech recording on her ex-friend Terezi's Facebook messenger using an alt that wasn't blocked yet. She had to leave audio so she could listen to it, because she'd been blind ever since they were four. It was summer, the two were playing with illegal fireworks and one of Terezi's bottle rockets hit Vriska in the eye and Vriska had responded by holding Terezi down and shoving lit sparklers into both of her eyeballs. Since Vriska was tried as a juvenile and had already gotten the mental health intervention, she was no longer subject to a restraining order, but since she did not consider her reaction to be her fault, she could not understand why Terezi hated her to this very day. "Hey," all of the messages read and or talked, "Eridan's mentally unstable and also hot as fuck brother walked into his shitty family restaurant dressed as the world's gayest cowboy pretending to be a food Network star with a gay right wing journalist's name. It's a fucking riot, you should come check it out with me. We can take bets on how long before the cops show up."

Within fifteen minutes of her hitting send, and despite her cuntshattering unpopularity, a bunch of middle schoolers started ubering to the restaurant to witness the fuckery. Even Terezi came, occasionally prying Sollux off of Feferi's chubby tween tits to have him describe shit that was happening in the restaurant to her so she wouldn't miss out. In this stammering huddled mass of unwashed pjt stink, awkward boners and uncontrolled acne, Dionysis himself flew down from the heavens and shitted a miracle upon the humble eatery. The first middle schooler got hungry and ordered a fucking cheeseburger from Cronus. Cronus, being himself, made the most fabulous, extra ass cheeseburger ever created, using ground steak with butter, aged cheddar, Walla Walla sweet onion, heirloom tomatoes and crisp shredded romaine with Dijon mustard. It was delicious, because he made a burger he would have eaten himself, and that stinky, pimply, crackly voiced little cunt told everyone in the restaurant that it was actually fucking good. Skeptical, Sollux asked to have a bite, which was initially rejected because of his disgusting vampire teeth and the braces used to contain them. After finding a knife to cut off a piece with, however, Sollux ate of the sandwich and told the children that the first kid spoke the truth. "It's true, guys. Eridan's super hot but extra nasty mentally ill attention whore brother is a damn good cook. This is the best fucking cheeseburger I've ever had, it's better than a Big Mac. I'd order one for myself, but I'm poor white trash." He said. 

"I'm rich white trash and I'll buy you one." Feferi giggled. She and Sollux publicly made out all the way to the register, rendering the entire restaurant uncomfortable to occupy by way of their presence.

"Now I want to buy one to see if Sollux's pallate is trash." Terezi said. 

Many other agreed, and children clamoured to buy Cronus's cheeseburgers. They sold so well that he had to send Irene to make a store run for more ingredients eight times as the hungry children devoured all his tasty sandwiches. 

after the restaurant closed, the family sat around counting the fat stacks of cash, and the Amporas had a decision to make. "Wait here... Chef Milo." Elias said, still pretending to be Bob Burgerton and also putting finger quotes around the name chef Milo. He beconed his entire family to come into the kitchen with him. They huddled round the grill. "What the fuck do we do about Cronus?" He asked the family. "he made us a lot of money, but he did it by making a public spectacle of himself." 

Yaya nodded. "Making a spectacle of himself is literally Cronus's only marketable talent; what else could he do? The children think he's good looking and that his food is delicious. We can milk this until their parents notice they're getting fat and cut their allowances."

Eridan raised his hand meekly and offered a counter argument, feigning genuine concern so that his family would decide he was anxious for no reason and that keeping Cronus was smart. "His theatrics could give our restaurant a bad name and get us shut down if he freaks out and rapes someone with a pickle or something like he did that one time at Karkat's house. His outbursts can be bad." 

the family nodded. Irene spoke up. "we can just watch how he makes burgers for a little bit then use his celebrity chef character as an angle to kick him out before he flies off the handle and gets us shut down. Celebrity chefs don't permanently work at failing restaurants, they visit for a little while then go home to food Network or something." 

The family nodded again. Eridan rung his hands together with excitement at Cronus fixing the restaurant, but stopped and resumed looking concerned when Yaya noticed. "So it's settled," Elias announced. "we're letting him do this and learning his burger secrets, then kicking him out before he makes the bad kind of scene instead of the good kind like today." He added a decisive nod for emphasis. 

The entire family returned to the table where they had left Cronus, and faced him together as a family. Elias spoke for them all. "Chef Milo, we are going to let you fix our restaurant."


	21. Cronus asks for help

Cronus awoke to a horrible sight- a reassembled lil Cal seated on his chest holding a note. "Lil Cal can be neither created nor destroyed" it read, a clear reminder of this fact. "Kankri? Kankri? KaaaAank?" He whined, attempting to summon his boyfriend, but Kankri did not answer. He picked up the doll in both hands and walked out of the room clutching the dummy tightly but holding him out away from his body. "Kranki? Kankri? Where are you bro are you gelling your hair? Practicing your cello? Arguing with the mirror to build confidence? Kankri I need you buddy it's important", he whined. The house was empty. There was no one to have placed lil Cal on his person as a prank, everyone was at school or their job. Shaking, Cronus locked Cal into Dr. Vantas(MD)s document safe, which he had discerned the combination for in hopes it contained money or a gun. He put on his next Milo Greeknameopolous costume with a crushing sense of dread, and made his way to the restaurant. 

After a long day of selling burgers to everyone but Vriska's mom, who would no longer risk cheating on her husband at Bob's due to the high customer volume, Cronus returned home and checked the safe to be sure he hadn't hallucinated Cal before he had time to repress the memory. He pulled up the white pages and called the landline at the strider/lalonde household hoping to get one of the girls. To his great fortune, he got Rose, who he proceeded to interrogate. 

"Hey," he said, after exchanging proper phone pleasantries, "is there any chance at all your brother put that creepy ass doll back together, snuck into the vantas household and placed it gently but firmly on my sleeping chest to freak me out?" 

"The juju?" Rose asked rhetorically. "No, he'd have bragged if he did, he hasn't shut up about that stupid thing since you and Kankri destroyed it. It's probably another of the same doll someone who knows us ordered online to fuck with you. If you have one, you should give it to Dave so he finally shuts the fuck up."

"Uh, no, it's not a new doll, it's got the same head. Rose, I need your help with some spooky shit. Kankri accidentally bought a cursed doll, and that's why Dave and dirk are obsessed with it. If you look at it, it can curse you. They're under it's hypnotic spell, and they want to show it to everyone because that's what the evil spirit in the doll wants, so I actually think we should just get rid of it before it curses more people." 

"Why aren't you and Kankri cursed?" Rose asked. 

"Uh... It can only curse virgins." He lied. He had absolutely no idea why he and Kankri had both beheld the cretinous doll directly without becoming dedicated to showing it to others.

"I see. Cronus, did you know that dirk is not a virgin? How is he cursed?" She asked. 

"I don't know, you just messed up my theory. Look just uh, come see the doll for yourself, and then-" 

Rose cut him off. "Ahh, see, you're actually cursed too, you're just resisting it better. You must have strong magical energy. I mean, the powers that be had to give you something to make up for your being airheaded to a previously unseen degree of inflation and probably schizophrenic. Wrap the doll in a sheet so no one else can look at it and I'll be right over." 

"K". He replied, and then they both hung up. 

Within minutes, Rose had arrived with a bunch of spooky candles and a commercial looking boxed kit reading "my first demon summoning" and advertising it's entertainment value with an image of delighted looking children with a cartoon demon contained in a salt circle. Without a word, they began setting up the demon summoning kit in the Vantas's Christian household, choosing the kitchen because it'd be easy to clean up the salt once they were finished. At the stroke of midnight, they began the ritual, and but 1215, they were finished. The two of them waited, but it appeared nothing was going to happen. 

"Should we just close up and banish it to be safe?" Grown man Cronus Ampora asked the spooky tween. "I think we got a sneaky one." 

Rose shook her head, determined to speak to a demon. Dr. Vantas(MD) loomed suddenly out of the darkness of the hall, stumbling toward the fridge, and accidentally walked into the salt circle. as he tried to walk through to reach his tasty snacks, it was as if he hit a wall. "Woah! What the fuck!" He yelled, but in Pashto. 

"Oh, rose, I'm so stupid. Literally all of my inlaws are demons, we should have just asked. There are literally four demons living here." Cronus said with obvious embarrassment.

"Inlaws?" Rose asked. "You and Kankri are married?" 

"I mean not yet but it's clearly going to happen." Cronus said, as if Rose was an idiot.

"You wish to marry my son, specist fuckboy who has trapped me with salt?" Dr. Vantas(MD) asked. "There were kinder ways to ask that would not have made me as angry." 

"No, we need help with actual demon stuff, I'd never ask permission to marry your son. I'm far too American for that kind of thing." 

"Some Americans still respect their boothing's parents, revolting fuckboy who has imprisoned me with minerals. My name is Karam, with what demon tasks may I assist you tonight?" 

Rose held out the bundle containing Cal. "Mighty Karam, we beseech you to help us destroy this cursed doll we accidentally ordered off amazon. It is beyond our powers as mortals, and it's giving us the creeps. Please consume it with the fires of hell and send it back from whence it came." She said in her spookiest voice. 

"Yes, children, I can help you. In return, I demand that my fuckboy son in law take the container of pad Thai out of the refrigerator and put it on a plate, then microwave it for one and a half minutes on high. Of you, young girl, I demand you sweep all this fucking salt off my kitchen floor and get these weird candlabras out of my home, they're giving me the creeps. Neither of you must ever tell my wife that I have done this, because we're supposed to be a Christian family. Do you accept my price?" Dr. Vantas(MD) asked. 

"We accept your price, wise and powerful Karam." Rose said. 

"Yeah I'll do it, which takeout box is pad Thai?" Cronus asked. 

"I wrote pad Thai on it." 

"I can't read Arabic." 

"I wrote it in English, specifically because you live here and the law of this household states that after three days it's up for grabs and anyone can eat it." 

Cronus nodded and retrieved the pad Thai, proceeding to follow Dr. Vantas(MD)'s instructions. 

"IT IS DONE!" Dr.Vantas(MD) bellowed in a sulfurous voice. He held the doll out at arm's length, dramatically, and it caught fire and burned away in his hand without setting off the smoke alarm. "alright Rose, please sweep up this salt so I can eat my pad Thai in bed. Cronus, check if it's hot and if it isn't please microwave it again." 

"You shouldn't eat In bed, Dr. Vantas, especially not pad Thai. It's sloppy and you'll get ants." Rose said shyly. 

"Sweet girl, it's alright. I can handle the uncomfortable price of my slovenly behavior. Let me eat the bed noodles." Rose nodded. The both of them understood.

As they tended to their duties, a man came flashing into the kitchen at superhuman speed. He looked like Quicksilver as played by Aaron Johnson, his hair spiked like a frosty douche. "woah fuck I'm late did the demon shit already happen?" The man asked. 

"Who the fuck are you?" Everyone replied. 

"I'm Hermes, I'm here to stop Cronus from doing demon dealing shit." 

The three of them stared. The man was definitely speedy enough and douchey enough to be Hermes. He radiated the kind of energy that comes from men who gamble, sleep with their buddys' girlfriends behind their backs and steal things, yet somehow seemed benevolent. He took the silence as an opportunity to speak his piece. "Yeah so obviously, I'm a messenger for the Greek pantheon, very official. Did he already do it?" 

Everyone nodded yes. Hermes continued. "Alright I'm a let it slip and not tell anyone you went through with it, Cronus, but go through us from now on, ok? Don't go around summoning demons, you might get yourself in trouble." 

rose rasied her hand. "Mr. Hermes? Why did you only come to stop Cronus?" She asked. 

"We watch out for our people", Hermes said. "Cronus is one of them." 

I thought Cronus was Italian-American like everyone else in New Jersey." Dr. Vantas(MD) exclaimed in faux shock to be an asshole about Cronus's identity problem. 

"Nope, he's a super awesome Greek person and we have to take care of him because he's special. Alright, bye guys I'm off to have a good time stealing shit, drinking expensive liquors and hooking up with bitches at the club until someone figures out I'm not back yet and that it's been suspiciously long." He said, and before anyone could say goodbye, he had flashed back out the door. 

"Cronus?" Rose whined unsurely. "Does stuff like this happen to you often?" 

Cronus stoically scratched his ass and sniffed loudly. "Fuck, man, I dunno, I repress like 90% of my memories, I won't remember this tomorrow." He said, then handed Dr. Vantas(MD) his plate and shuffled off to sleep with Kankri. 

"Dr. Vantas?" She whined again, just as unsurely. 

"Yes?" He urged, implying with an outstretched open palm that she should proceed. 

"Was that the real Hermes? Is that stuff real?" 

"Do I look like I know every supernatural entity, Rose? That's like assuming Gamzee knows Samuel L Jackson because they're both black. Of course I don't know if that's the real Hermes. Anyway, please don't summon me again unless it's a really big emergency, my wife would be really angry if she found out I was giving people devilish deals. It's late, go home and go back to bed." With that, he waddled to his bedroom to eat pad Thai in comfort.


	22. Arby's is for Lesbians

Rose thought long and hard about the events of the previous day- truly, her first real experience with the paranormal, and absolutely nothing had gone the way anyone anywhere would have lead her to believe it should. For one, she had discovered because of the Vantas family that demons lived in suburban neighborhoods, performed lifesaving surgeries, had psychiatric offices, were charitable to hopeless people like Cronus Ampora and lectured their fellow children on social justice. She had tried to be surprised about Karkat as well, but she really wasn't. Karkat genuinely struck her as what she'd expect a demon with a human appearance to be like- rude, vulgar, trying to bang a homeschool kid; that just made sense. For two, she had apparently discovered that the greek pantheon was also real, unless the 'Hermes' who had appeared that night was just a tweaker stumbling into people's homes who somehow knew both Cronus's name and that he intended to summon a demon to help him with a problem, which seemed very unlikely. For three, she'd discovered that Cronus was apparently special enough to warrant the direct intervention of at least one diety, granted that 'Hermes' wasn't a tweaker. She contemplated her next course of action and weighed her curiosity about what could possible make a cretin like Cronus special enough to warrant such an event.

She considered the tale she had assembled from the testimony of her smelly and strange brothers about Cronus's coming into their house and pepper spraying Dirk for the cursed doll she'd just helped him get rid of only to have their lives interrupted by a meteor swarm that glitched out of existence only after destroying their street, and Gamzee's story that he and his brother had found a file called "SGRUB" that had destroyed the Ampora patriarch's computer while they were searching his creepy house. According to google, Meteors had hit all over the earth around that very same time, and youtube videos existed of the meteors glitching out of existence moments later. Ever since coming into contact with the cursed doll, her brothers had become obsessed with it, and had been obsessively trying to get it back from Kankri and Cronus ever since they had stolen it from their house. While a lot wasn't adding up, something seemed to be going on, and she began to question the popular narrative that Cronus's strange outbursts and erratic behaviors were the result of him being a total spaz and the creepiest pervert in New Jersey; it occurred to her this was just the first instance of his strange and misunderstood life that she'd ever had firsthand experience of and that she might have had a different outlook if she'd been there for any of the previous outbursts- except the one where he boobyraped Karkat with a cucumber. That instance was pretty cut and dried.

Naturally, as a lover of all things strange and spooky, she was going to have to figure out what the fuck was up with Cronus, especially since it appeared vaguely threatening on a global scale. However, since Cronus was the biggest creep in New Jersey, whos alpha creep aura scared off any lesser creeps to draw near, and the family members she could ask about his mysterious nature either hated his guts or were Eridan, she would have to find an alternative route. She'd have to get Hermes to show back up somehow so she could ask him questions about it all, and fortuitously, as he was the messenger for the other gods and she was a young hip feminist lesbian with connections, she figured there was at least one feasible way to get that kind of attention. She would assemble the local lesbians and have a ceremony honoring Artemis, which should be super not hard. She immediately opened her phone to text Kanaya, then realized explaining her plan would sound insane. She closed it again and headed to the most aesthetic old cemetary within pedestrian-accessible distance of her home to have a sit and think about her shit before she got to her business, where she coincidentally encountered her big sister Roxy hanging out with Vriska's big brother- or so she thought.

"Wow, Roxy, Tyler, what are you guys doing here? You're not goths." Rose asked and also stated. 

"Rose, don't be rude. This is Aranea, and I'm helping her with voice training. Later we're going to either buy or shoplift some cute tops and skirts and she's going to keep them at our house until she leaves for college." Aranea waved, and Roxy whipped out a pink enameled balisong, flipping it artfully to whip the blade out. "Don't tell anybody, because if her parents find out I'll gut yah, I don't care if we're sisters." Rose nodded. 

"We're here because nobody uncool visits old cemeteries", Aranea said softly, trying to maintain a higher pitch than her voice naturally tended toward. "I'm trying to get a head start so I can be confidently out as a freshman next fall, I earned enough in scholarships that I won't need my parents anymore so I won't have to worry about what they think."

"oh." Rose said. "Well, if you're a lesbian, I'm trying to arrange a ceremony honoring the goddess Artemis. I was about to call my friend Kanaya for help, but since I tripped and fell into this I figured I'd invite you. We don't even have a venue yet. I need to make sure we can keep men out."

"Well, I am the assistant manager at Arby's," Aranea said softly. "I can only schedule women to work that day, then we can kick all the dudes out and lock all the doors. People mostly use the drive thru anyway."

Rose nodded. "I mean, sure, that seems good enough. There won't be any men, and I'm sure she likes french fries. Nobody hates french fries."

"Plus, roast beef sandwiches remind people of vaginas. It's like decorating the place with edible yonic artwork, Arby's is already like a temple to cunnilingus. The goddess of lesbians would probably like that" Aranea said. Rose nodded, as this was indeed the truth.

"can I come as a show of support?" Roxy asked.

"Well, I mean, you're straight, but you've never had a boyfriend so I'm sure the goddess Artemis won't care." Rose said. 

"Harsh", Aranea whispered.

"I don't think Artemis was the goddess of lesbians", Roxy said, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Find me one example of an ancient lesbian, Roxy. A single one." Rose challenged.

"Alright, fine, she is the goddess of lesbians. Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm a spooky dooky shitbird and I think it'll be a good time." Rose said with a dishonest shrug. Roxy and Aranea appeared to buy it. 

"She has eaten nothing but Halloween cereal since she was eight. She's pretty spooky dooky." Aranea said in her support.

"her cereal looks like spooky dooky." Roxy giggled. 

"I eat other food." rose groaned. With her venue selected and at least two participants to make her seem less crazy, Rose texted Kanaya about the planned event and told her to bring any lesbian who would come.

On the appointed date, at the appointed hour, the lesbians gathered to the Arby's, which Rose had decorated with various animal skulls, antlers and horns, racoon tails, sheer curtains and artificial silk wildflowers as well as prints of Georgia O'Keefe paintings. As promised, Aranea had scheduled only women to work that day, and at the appointed time, she stood on the counter and loudly announced: "ALL THE DUDES HAVE GOT TO LEAVE, ONE OF MY WORKERS IS HAVING A PANIC ATTACK. SHE IS A SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVOR AND SHE NEEDS THE DUDES TO LEAVE. SOMEONE CLEAR THE BATHROOM, I WILL BE EXITING OUT THE BACK." The male patrons were confused, but responded to Aranea's deep and authoritative command voice. Aranea pretended to go out the back, but actually just went into the secret employee bathroom to change clothes. The rest of the girls on duty looked confused, but just continued to do their fucking jobs until Aranea came back out and tossed the keys to Rose and Roxy, who locked up behind the men. The orignal trio were joined by kanaya as well as Kanaya's older sister Porrim- a political lesbian who was truly bisexual but had chosen to date and love only women, but the girls decided that she still counted. They began the ritual, offering Artemis a tray full of roast beef sandwiches and curly fries as the employees looked on in confusion between customers. The five of them recited a neat poem while unwrapping beef and cheddar sandwiches, then the four lesbians ate them sexually while Roxy just ate hers normally because she had never imagined eating pussy in her life and had no idea what to do. As Horsey sauce and cheese sauce dribbled down their chins, Hermes appeared before them in a flash of improbability. 

"Who the fuck are you?" Everyone but Rose asked. 

"Hi Hermes, I have some questions about last night." Rose stated. The other girls stared in wonderment. The employees debated whether they should call the cops. 

"Yes, it's me, Hermes!" Hermes said, "And I'm here to deliver you guys a message from Artemis that this display was disrespectful and that while she appreciates your enthusiasm, she would prefer further ceremonies to honor her preferably take place outdoors in a place of natural beauty under a full moon and do not feature roast beef sandwiches. In fact, she would strongly prefer any meat eaten at her ceremonies be wild game rather than farmed animals." He looked to the children, hands clasped, his facial features reading as concerned, and nodded his head. "Alright, I have to leave." he said.

"Not yet!" Rose demanded. "I've got questions about last night!"

"And I do not have to answer them!" Hermes said. "Try saying please."

"Hermes, may I please interrogate you about the goingson last night?"

"No! Goodbye." Hermes said, turning to leave. He was intercepted with a frying pan to the face, knocking him to the floor. One of the Arby's employees stood over his concussed and unconscious body. 

"How the fuck did this homeless person get in here!?" she screamed. "I watched you lock all the doors! DID HE GET SO HIGH HE CAN PASS THROUGH WALLS?"

"You didn't tell us the greek gods were real, Rose!" Kanaya screamed. "I'm an atheist! Now what do I do?!" she wailed.

"AAAAAAAA!" Aranea screamed, looking at the man on the floor. "WHY DID YOU HIT HIM WITH A PAN, TANISHA?! NOW WE'VE GOTTA CALL THE COPS!" Aranea and Tanisha screamed. The other employees screamed as well. Porrim and Roxy looked to eachother for guidance before Porrim unlocked one of the doors, threw the keys back to the counter and walked out dragging Kanaya so that they wouldn't be involved with this nonsense. Roxy grabbed Rose's shoulder and made for the door as well, but Rose declined. 

"I won't leave Aranea to deal with this on her own." 

Roxy sighed heavily. "I won't leave my baby sister to clean up this adult sized mess." The girls hugged Aranea, and Tanisha, in tears, dialed 911. But before she could press the second 1, Hermes was suddenly gone. She closed the phone. 

"Nevermind, I guess everything went better than expected." Aranea said, choking a sob. 

"No it didn't!" Tanisha wept. "Jesus help me, I just hit a greek god in the dome with a frying pan, I'm probably in so much supernatural trouble! I'm taking the rest of my shift off, Tyler, I have to go to church so I don't get turned into a frog or something by the angry heathen gods." 

"Understandable. Have a nice day." She replied.


	23. Kankri Intervenes

Kankri gave a dashing smile and a wink to the audience, sitting at the island counter in his rich parents' kitchen as his brother cooked one of the many nutritious meals he had learned about at Jade's house. "Hey, what's up, readers? It's been a while since you've seen me." he grinned. 

Karkat rolled his eyes deeply. "Kankri, shut the fuck up. Just because we can break the fourth wall doesn't mean we should. Quite honestly, it's really annoying, and I think you should stop." He stirred his rotini as they boiled beside his stir fry, featuring mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, spinach, tomato, egg, cotija crumbles and a very heavy and liberal application of spices that may have been too much.

"Nobody fucking asked, you Karkat. If you didn't want to hear from me, you wouldn't be here, right readers?" Kankri said again.

"Ugh, Kankri, for real, you've got to get a handle on your fourth wall breaks, it'll only bring you heartache. If people outside the family see you doing it, they're either gonna think you're insane and wonder how I never caught it, or worse, they'll realize it means you're a demon and get all weird on us." Dr. Vantas (PHD) drawled as she sat behind her plate. "We worked hard to be a christian household, you're gonna have to knock it off before you attract unwanted attention from the community."

"Well right now, mother, we are safe at home, and I need to explain to the reader what the hell is going on." He said, still maintaining an artificially cheery demeanor despite his rising rage. 

"Kankri, don't curse." Dr. Vantas(PHD) insisted. 

"I'm an adult ma, I have to learn and grow by making mistakes such as this one. Anyway, reader, I finally remembered that Eridan might have an emotional eating problem, and I'm going to go address that because he has also lost his father."

Karkat looked up from his meal preparations, making direct eye contact as he strained his rotini in preparation for incorporation into his nice veggie stir fry. "What Kankri means is that he realized that Eridan is probably going to be his brother in law, so if Eridan causes legal issues, the cops might show up at his house." 

Kankri turned in his chair, facing the same way as Karkat as to maintain the same location of broken fourth wall. "No, that's not what I meant at all, and to go on the record, Eridan is really more of Karkat's problem than mine, as they've been friends for years. The cops will definitely talk to him first. I just care, out of the goodness of my heart, for Eridan's wellbeing, but especially the safety of Karkat and my father, who are definitely already on several watchlists for being ethnically suspicious and would probably get pulled in on bullshit charges if Eridan did something illegal because the cops would go to Karkat before me."

Dr. Vantas(PHD) sighed. "Can I voice objection to Cronus becoming my son in law, since you didn't bother to dispute that? The boy has potential, but he needs Jesus." she asserted. 

"Cronus does not need Jesus, he needs a lot of medications and probably DBT." Kankri asserted, ignoring the issue of their presumed engagement once again. "Anyway, as I just informed our kind audience, I need to go help Eridan now. Eridan needs me."

"Aren't you going to have dinner first?" Karkat asked, gesturing to his homecooked meal.

"Eat your brother's dinner, Kankri, he was nice enough to cook for us. I think he'll feel better if you eat before you go." Dr. Vantas (PHD) insisted. She turned to break the forth wall again. "Kankri should eat this nice food, shouldn't he? Home cooked meals are made with love, even if he and his brother argue constantly, Karkat did this because he loves us, Kankri should stay." 

"Kankri should go, because he can't eat if he's about to have a panic attack and doesn't know why exactly that is. Please make a plate for Kankri to enjoy once he's calmed down." Kankri said flatly, then jogged out the front door. In actuality, he didn't like zucchini and was unsure about the spices Karkat had used and also the terrifying amount o them. He started jogging to the Ampora household because he wanted to get fit and trim so he wouldn't have moobies anymore, which while obviously moobies and not boobies still triggered his dysphoria and needed to vacate his being and leave him alone. Finally getting his father's permission to cut off his long hair had simultaneously raised his self esteem and drawn his attention to other body image issues, and now the moobies were a big deal, and so was everyone carrying on about him marrying Cronus as if he were a girl and they had just expected him to be heterosexual and marry a dude. Kankri was the opposite of a girl and also resented compulsory heterosexuality, and he felt this insistence his fate involved marriage to a male was a sign that despite all signs to the contrary even the most seemingly supportive members of his family still fundamentally rejected his identity which totally fucking sucked and was giving him an actual literal panic attack that wasn't a lie to escape from overspiced zucchini. The knowlege that his entire family was fake and that this entire dynamic was constructed in addition to total bullshit made him want to cry, and he breathed a bit harder than jogging should have made him both because of his bullshit feelings of irritation and the fact that all the reasons he had them were completely made up. By the time he was finished stressing himself out about that, he had arrived at the Ampora household. He rung the door and 'mr. burgerton' answered. 

"Hello teen boy who's name I do not remember as we have met only twice. Are you here to play fork-knife with my round son?" he asked unartfully, being quite bad at pretending to be a new person to people he'd met with his real name.

"Please don't call Eridan your round son, but yes, I am here to do just that." Kankri lied. He didn't play fortnite and had no interest in ever doing so.

"Why not? He is my son and he is something like an orb. Nearly spherical in comparison to the other son that I have, my round son." Elias shrugged. His moustache shrugged.

"Mr. Burgerton, your stepson has actually lost a lot of weight, so unless he has ballooned back up to his previous size in the two weeks since I last saw him, please respect his progress." Kankri said.

"That he has, teen boy. Carry on with your activities and do not search the house for lawyering costumes that would fit my body." Elias said, awkwardly pretending his moustache would hide him from someone who had actually seen him before. Fortunately, Kankri did not seem to catch on, but the behavior had him nervous. He peered to the audience for help, concluding from their demeanor that mr. Burgerton was indeed as creepy as he thought. His suspicions confirmed, he went upstairs to get Eridan, who was indeed a regular-sized boy now and only just the littlest bit chubby. All of his clothes were loose. 

"Hey buddy", he said awkwardly, realizing he didn't have a plan and hadn't expressed any interest in Eridan's life at any point previous.

"Are you here to tell me to stop talking to Karkat? Because you're not his mom, I won't." Eridan said without looking away from his game. 

"No, I want to uh... well, I wanted to talk to you about... uh... it's awkward because honestly..." kankri stammered, realizing he'd waited so long to do something about it that Eridan may have settled into an unhealthy solution to his eating disorder.

"You don't need permission to suck my brother's dick, I don't care, Kankri. Fuck him, it'll probably calm him down. The entire time he lived here, his socks were like fucking aluminum- flat, surprisingly hard for their light weight; extra crispy. You are doing planet earth a favor." Eridan waved his hand dismissively. "You might want to talk to my Yaya if it's about Cronus, my parents have disowned him, she still loves and cares for him very much, OK? Talk to Yaya, let me play fortnite." he waved it faster and faster even though he was the one going on without leaving Kankri a break to speak. His stupid rings shone in the light, each one tackier and more likely procured from a claw machine game at the mall than the last. 

"Uh..." Kankri paused. Eridan had no idea he was trans, and yet, still, here was another person acting like his fate began and ended with Cronus. He pinched the bridge of his nose before continuing in a slightly terse tone, still dressed with politeness. "It's actually about your weight, namely that you've historically had trouble with it and have now lost a lot of it quickly in the wake of a family trauma. I wanted to make sure you're OK."

"Why?" Eridan asked. "Do you think I'm going to shoot up the school like everyone else? Are you trying to figure out what day to keep Karkat at home?" he followed his statement with a disgusted 'uch', an artificial approximation of a dryheave. 

"Yes." Kankri said, "But also no, don't let other people tell you what to do, Eridan, don't shoot up the school just because that's what everybody wants."

"Thanks, I don't have plans, I was never gonna." he said flatly. He began waving his hand again. "Go talk to my Yaya about Cronus." 

With a deep breath, Kankri quelled his perturbance with Eridan's problematic symptoms of mental disturbance, pushing people who were clearly expressing an interest in him away, and forced himself not to get to hollerin'. "I am not going to do that, actually, but can you please make me two promises?"

"I already told you I'm not gonna shoot up the school, what more do you want from me?" Eridan whined from a position of entitlement- said entitlement being to Kankri leaving when he asked.

FInally, the boy snapped. "Listen fuckface, my little brother might be an idiot, but he wouldn't make friends with the kind of deadbeat incel who would snap over his entitlement to some poor girl at school becoming his personal therapist and secretary who has to do whatever he says whenever he says it, and if he brought you into my home and you were like that I would have snapped the ladder in the pool, cut your thick little fucking throat with the splintered PVC, and made it look like a tragic accident resultant from your ass being way too fat. But Eridan, I didn't, because I can tell you're not the kind of kid who would do things like that. I can tell, just like your shit for brains overactive cuntoid brother, that deep down you really want to be a good person even if you have a natural disadvantage and are congenitally inclined to dickery and evil. I'm going to tell you exactly what I want, you antifeminist cockbrained little shit, and it's exactly two things. One. Leave Rose Lalonde THE FUCK alone, do not talk to her EVER AGAIN. She's told you she's not interested too many times already." He was cut off by the younger man.

"I can't believe you said those things to me", Eridan said, standing up, pushing in his chair and facing Kankri. Puffing his chest, he squared up to the older boy, immediately determining Kankri would probably still have him beat in a fistfight though they were nearly the same height unless he chose his timing and placement with great care. "How dare you come into my house", he said, pointing at Kankri with his right hand while grabbing a replica WWII trench knife with his left, "interrupt my match, call me a fuckface and threaten to slit my throat. How dare you." he said, keeping his tone even and his finger pointed as he swung in with the trench spike, using the knuckle portion and nailing Kankri in the solar plexus. 

Kankri crumpled, but looked furious. Candycorn horns grew out of his skull, his eyes glowed a candy red, and his teeth drew into points. "My second demand", he wheezed, his voice distorting demonically, "IS THAT YOU GET HELP WITH YOUR EATING, ERIDAN, YOU HAVE AN EMOTIONAL EATING PROBLEM." he stood back up slowly, using Eridan's alarm at his transformation to plow a powerful slap into his left forearm, knocking his hand out of alignment for a followup punch. "YOU GAIN AND LOSE WEIGHT IN RELATION TO STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS AND I'M GENUINELY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR WELLBEING, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE YOUR WHOLE FAMILY IS FUCKED UP ABOUT WEIGHT AND BODYSIZE. YOU GENUINELY DID NOT HAVE EVEN A PAPER-THIN CHANCE AT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD." he said firmly and loudly, licks of flame escaping on his breath as he kicked Eridan backwards, thumping his ass into the floor. Eridan sat, his mouth agape, shaking as he stared up at an actual fucking demon. "PLEASE SQUIRT ME WITH HOLY WATER NOW, SO I CAN GO BACK OUTSIDE." Kankri requested. "ACT QUICKLY, OR I WILL BURN YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE DOWN. THAT IS NOT A THREAT, IT JUST HAPPENS WHEN I'M LIKE THIS." he said, fire shooting out of his mouth. Eridan sprinted to his Yaya's room, searching for the little jar of holy water she frequently took home from church with her, but was unable to find it. In desperation, he just poured some water into one of the disposable plastic cups the family used to taste the night water, made a sign of the cross over it, and splashed it on Kankri while screaming 'Jesus christ'. With a bubbling hiss, the water's impact cooled Kankri and he resumed his usual human boy form. "Dope, thanks dude. Don't tell anyone I'm a demon or I'll strangle you with a pool noodle." Kankri said, giving a thumbs up.

"Why is every death you threaten me with aquatic?" Eridan asked, shaken up by the entire ordeal.

"I dunno, feels good man." Kankri said with a shrug. Without another word, he jogged down the stairs and out the front door. Eridan stood in his bedroom doorway, staring at the charred spot in the middle of his bedroom carpet.


	24. Rose is forced to prove her outrageous claims to Kanaya

Rose turned to her beautiful punk datemate, Kanaya, with whom she had done many a lesbian thing after apologizing for accidentally making her worship a real diety, but not sex because they are still children. "Listen, ever since I did that demonic ritual at the uh... ... Kankri household? I can't remember Karkat's last name right now, I'm not sure why. Anyway, ever since I... wow fuck, it's Vantas. They're the Vantases. Anyway, my point is I still want to know why there are actual real dieties that truly exist and most people don't know about it, and more importantly, why they consider the creepiest man in new Jersey to be special enough to warrant protecting. The same guy has showed up twice now, answering to Hermes, and refused to tell me why he wouldn't let Cronus make deals with demons, and I really want to know. Kanaya, I need a plan."

"Maybe you don't need a plan." Kanaya said with a shrug. "Maybe he's an incarnation of the greek god of creepiness and that's why they care, he's here to spend a lifetime on earth, learning the ways of humankind and acting like a huge creep." She took this time to reapply her lipstick, which was hella smeared from all the smooching these girls had been up to. "Besides, I don't think Porrim and Aranea will come a second time, seeing as the first time didn't go so well, and also we've been asked not to use Arby's by both Hermes himself as well as Aranea, who got in a lot of trouble for letting us use the Arby's. I'm not one to let Arby's management tell me what to do, but I don't want to fuck Aranea's life up when it's already as hard as it is."

"Aranea's rich." Rose said. "She doesn't need the job.

"Aranea's unsupportive family is rich and she anticipates losing their support when she transitions in college, she's going to be very poor." Kanaya replied. "Let her keep her job at Arby's." Rose nodded in agreement, having pulled her phone up to check google about some things. 

"Alright, so, Cronus definitely isn't an incarnation of the god of creepiness, because the greeks had no specific god of creepiness, probably because every single one of them acted like a creep." Rose said. "So your theory is out."

"I mean maybe it's not," Kanaya insisted. "Maybe he's one of the various creepy gods they had and that's why he's so creepy and also special enough that Hermes won't let him make any deals with demons. Remind me how you know the Vantas family is demons, again? I'm new to not rejecting the notion of such things outright and this is a shock to my system, and if I recall, you said Cronus told you they were all demons and you decided to trust him. I'd trust your account that Dr. Vantas(MD) did something incredibly spooky, however, uh... this would not be the first time you had been untruthful about something being spooky because you wanted earth to be spooky, Rose. Like when you told me that house I proposed squatting in was haunted and that you'd seen a ghost there, so I went inside and looked for the ghost and was able to demonstrate that it wasn't there because ghosts are not real."

"She obviously hid because she was embarrassed to be headless, Kanaya. I wouldn't let you see me if I was headless, either." Rose stated. "I still intend to guide her soul to peace as soon as I can get a coven who is willing to break anti-trespassing laws with me."

"Right. What I'm saying is, I saw Hermes, so I believe that, I guess, as much as anyone can, but I haven't seen any member of the Vantas family do any demon stuff."

"That's because they're Christians, Kanaya, or more specifically, Mrs. Dr. Vantas(PHD) is Christian and doesn't want them doing demonic things. They don't do demon stuff on purpose, when Mr. Dr. Vantas(MD) destroyed that cursed doll for us, he specifically asked us not to tell his wife that he was doing demon stuff."

"So If I went to Mr. Dr. Vantas(MD) right now and asked him to do demon stuff for me, as long as his wife wasn't present, he'd probably do it, then?" Kanaya asked. 

"I mean, I don't know, I guess so." Rose said with a shrug. "We could always try, do you have stuff you'd need a demon's help with right now?" 

"My grades are p-r-e-t-t-y bad." She said, extending the word 'pretty' with a bit of a flourish. "I'd need supernatural help not to be grounded for the summer- not that my parents can stop me from doing what I want. I'm already grounded right now, and yet here I am at your house."

"We could go ask one of the Vantas boys to supernaturally improve your report card so we don't have to hide from your parents all summer. If we do that, you can spend more time smooching me." Rose offered, with a wiggle of her eyebrows. 

Kanaya nodded, she had nothing to lose and everything to gain if Rose was telling spooky lies, as she could resume knowing that nothing spooky was going on that couldn't be explained by science and it gave her something to fill the rest of her free time with before she'd have to sneak in right before her mom got home and pretend she was actually obeying the terms of her grounding. If Rose wasn't lying to be spooky, she could probably stop being grounded and resume having free roam of the town until sundown-- at least until she got in trouble with the police again, and that sounded like a nice way to spend two or three weeks. "Alright, let's go ask Kankri to improve my grades." She said. 

The two girls were off, passing Dirk on the couch, where he was watching HGTV for some reason. Rose stopped momentarily. "Dirk, why are you always watching home shows, and the Great British bakeoff, and stuff like that? It's weird, because I've never seen you seek any kind of involvement with our flowerbed, bake anything or do any housework at all, not even your own laundry."

"WAAAAAH", Dirk moaned, limply pawing the air in her general direction as if to swat her away. 

"Should we buy you a set of woodworking tools, oven mitts and some terra cotta pots for Christmas so you can garden, bake, and make Furniture?" Kanaya asked. 

"WAAAH!" he moaned again, swatting the air a little more violently. "It's calming", he whined. "Maybe I need to settle the fuck down."

"Yeah, you definitely do." Kanaya agreed.

"Why?" Rose asked.

"Something's been bothering me really bad ever since I saw Cronus's Emilio doll." He said. "It's NBD, don't concern yourselves ladies."

"Oh, Emilio was cursed, Dirk. It's OK, me and Cronus summoned a demon to destroy him."

"Cursed is one way of- wait, what the fuck did you just make me listen to with my own ears? You were within raping distance of Cronus to do what, now?"

"It's OK Dirk, he didn't touch me. We summoned a demon to destroy Emilio."

"Oh." Dirk said. "I uh... don't believe you, but thank you for your honesty, Rose."

Kanaya snorted. Rose glowered. "We really did, it's true. If I'm wrong, show me Emilio."

"His name was Lil' Cal in this household, Rosey, and I can't, because Cronus and Kankri took his head and I don't know what they did with it. Either way, Lil' Cal cannot be created or destroyed. He'll be back someday." 

"Riiiiiight." Kanaya droned, nervous and quite positive that the lalonde-strider household had a mental illness problem. She accepted that her future wife was probably crazy and that it was not her fault, however. "Well, Me and Rose are going to go summon another Demon, OK? We'll be safe, I'll bring her back before dinner."

Dirk offered a thumbs up and carried on viewing home and garden television. He did not reveal to the girls that he intended to follow them because of the fucked up shit they'd said, but even if he had, they wouldn't have noticed him, because Dirk knew that he was very sneaky. Approximately three minutes after the girls left, he switched off the TV and turned off all the lights to save electricity, yelled "DAVE, ROX, I'M GONNA BRING BACK TACO BELL WHEN I GET BACK, TEXT ME WHAT YOU WANT FROM TACO BELL", then hopped into his car and drove to the neighborhood in which the Vantas household stood, parking his car at the end of a cul de sac to mask his presence, much like Cronus had a month or two ago except without covering it in forest debris. His car parked, he did him a little sneaky sneak and snuck into the Vantas household, immediately seeing a new, third youthful and extremely attractive male Vantas not much older than Kankri eating chips on the couch and watching romcoms while weeping. He was fit, unlike the entire rest of the household who were all kinda jiggly from a diet consisting entirely of convenience food, and significantly browner than both Karkat and Kankri, ruling out that he might be a secret third brother from the same mother. After a few moments, he heard Rose and Kanaya knock on the door and wedged himself firmly between the loveseat and the wall so that nobody could ever possibly detect his stealthy presence, but was shocked to discover that the smokin' hot bonus Vantas also squeezed behind the loveseat with him, and before he could notice Dirk, he shouted.

"Kankri! Answer the door!" he curled up looking pathetic and defeated, then snapped up straight as he noticed Dirk. "What are you doing in my house, angular fuckboy?" he whispered. "I have never seen you before in my life, did you come here to steal?"

"That's like a big assumption, dude, to just assume I'm a fuckboy. What if I'm a perfectly nice boy and I'm not here to fuck anything?" Dirk whispered back, but in monotone somehow. 

"Why are you in my house?!" he asked.

"Why are you in your house?" Dirk responded. "I've known the Vantases for years and you are not one of them."

"It's a long story", the man started, but Kankri called from the front door. 

"DAD, IT'S ROSE AND KANAYA." he hollered. "THEY REQUESTED YOU SPECIFICALLY." 

The much more youthful and hot looking Karam forcefully palmed his face. "Oh god." he muttered.

"What the fuck in several different directions", dirk said. "Don't tell them I'm here, Rose is my little sister. I'm making sure she's not doing anything weird."

"I won't", Karam promised, scooting out from behind the couch now that he knew it was not his wife. "Rose, listen, you have already created something of a situation here."

"Where is Dr. Vantas(MD)?" Rose asked. 

"I am Dr. Vantas(MD)." Karam informed her. 

Rose and Kanaya beheld him in disbelief. "No, you are not Dr. Vantas(MD). you are not old enough to be a doctor." Kanaya told him.

"I am Dr. Vantas(MD)." Karam asserted again. "Look, here's a picture of when I married my wife." he said, holding up a picture of himself and his beautiful wife on their wedding day. He looked just like he did in the picture. "I've been wearing a fat suit, old man makeup and spray on grey hair in a can to work and avoiding my wife for a week because I broke my contract with God when I did demon dealings with you and I went back from being almost a regular human with a vestigal demonic form to being a regular demon who's going to go to hell when I die, which reverted my only technically mortal body to the time I was healthiest because that's how demons work. I thought I'd get away with it and God would let it fly because I was already trapped in salt, but here we are, my life somewhat ruined. Have you done surgery in a fat suit? in addition to feeling unhygenic, it is also very hard. Not my best work this week, for sure." 

Rose and Kanaya both beheld him. "Since you're back to being a regular demon, then, can you help my friend Kanaya with her grades?" Rose asked. 

"Uh, No Rose, I am kindof upset right now." Karam said. 

"I'm actually extremely convinced you're a secret third Vantas brother who looks just like his dad. Prove to me objectively that your'e not a secret, third Vantas brother." Kanaya insisted, her arms crossed over his chest.

"Karkat, Kankri, come here!" Dr. Vantas(MD) called. The boys assembled. "Please tell Kanaya who I am." he said, as if issuing a challenge as he crossed his arms at the teenager.

"That's our dad." Karkat said. "Rose fucked him over."

"Yeah, That's our dad." Kankri said. "I'm not entirely going to blame Rose for my father's decisions, but I also blame Rose for what has occurred."

"Alright, prove to me you're all not just lying for Rose so I won't think she makes up lies to be spooky." Kanaya demanded. 

"I mean, that's uh, kindof a lot to ask." Karkat said. 

"Yeah, do you want one of us to hulk out on command or something?" Kankri asked. 

"I don't want to try to deal with contractors to rebuild my burnt down house while wearing old man makeup, a fat suit and spray on grey hair in a can, Kanaya. Please do not request such things of us." Karam said.

"I mean, Mom could do it." Kankri said with a shrug.

"Dad, why don't you just shapeshift to look like your old self so mom doesn't notice?" Karkat asked. "You're being really dumb about this. I'm literally a child and feel like I would handle this better."

Karam gestured to himself. "Karkat, please, look at me. Could you honestly tell me you could be this hot and decide to shapeshift into a fat wrinkly old man?"

"Uhhh...." Karkat said with discomfort, unwilling to admit that his dad was hot as fuck. "To not do surgery in a fat suit? probably."

"If I shapeshift, my body is the fat suit!" he yelled. 

"Can I propose, once again, my other and much more rational proposal that instead of living a lie you just tell Mom what happened and stop acting like this is such a big deal?" Kankri offered timidly.

"Kankri, I can't do that! Your mom is going to lose her proverbial shit if she finds out I decided not to move to heaven with her because some kid put a salt circle in the way of my snacks and I stepped into it like a dumbass."

"We did cast a demon-summoning spell." Rose said. "I figured it summoned you."

"Yeah, it probably did!" Karam yelled, panicking as he looked through the window only to see his wife's car pulled into the driveway. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" he screamed, running into Kankri's bedroom to hide.

Cronus, who no one had noticed, took a bold step into the center of the child cluster. "Everyone shut up, I'm gonna handle Kathleen. Kankri, go help your dad. Karkat, start cookin' the nicest dinner the Harleys taught you because your parents are probably still gonna fight and dinner time's gonna calm them down, because they're gonna get hangery. Rose and Kanaya, get the fuck out of here, like seriously what are you doing? I've got this, everyone get on your shit." He pointed his hands in relevant directions, then went to stand directly in front of the door at the top of the staircase to await Kathleen. 

Rose turned to Kanaya, not about to take instructions from Cronus, the creepiest man in New Jersey. "Are you satisfied or do we need to stay, because nothing Cronus says effects me." she asked and also asserted.

"I am super not convinced." Kanaya said.

"This seems like a pretty elaborate ruse to have set up in the 20 minutes it took us to come here, doesn't it?" Rose asked.

"I have no grounds to believe you haven't been planning this since the day I told you I was an atheist after you tricked me into worshipping a greek god." Kanaya insisted even though she was wrong.

"Alright, let's wait for someone to go off." Rose said, sitting at the kitchen island where Karkat was busy assembling the ingredients for the fanciest meal he'd learned from the Harley household- stuffed eggplant rollatini. His forehead had already begun to bead sweat from his intense focus on cutting the eggplant into long, thin slices. Kanaya joined Rose, taking a seat beside her and watching Karkat struggle with the eggplant. 

"Do you need help?" Kanaya asked. Karkat nodded. Kanaya nodded to Rose, and the girls entered the kitchen, Kanaya grabbing the second eggplant and another kitchen knife and struggling just as Karkat was to cut it into fat ribbons, and Rose mixing whatever crap Karkat said went together in the stuffing. 

Dr. Vantas(PHD) opened the door at the top of the basement stair and looked in confusion upon Cronus. "Uhh, Hi Cronus, why are you between me and the rest of my house looking like you've got something serious to say?" she asked with obvious discomfort.

Cronus put his hand out in front of him in the universal sign for stop. "Alright lady, listen here, There's a thing you gotta know before you can proceed, OK? It's not pretty, and we're gonna have to adjust to it, but nothin's gonna change that it happened no matter how much we wanna say shit like 'wow cronus that's so fucked up' or 'this is your fault, get out of my house, loser', so lemme tell you whats up."

"Alright." Dr. Vantas(PHD) said, looking angry and defensive, ready to deliver unto Cronus a righteous beating at a moment's notice.

"Alright so here's whats up, the ugly facts, that which cannot be changed. Decisions were made, terrible ones, that can never be unmade, and the consequences are never gonna be the same. Quite frankly, Dr. Vantas(PHD), plans have been laid to waste, and you're about to go file for a divorce, because last week, your husband fucked up really bad, and he's scared to tell you, so who's he gonna call? The ghostbusters, of course not. The ghostbusters are not real, and they don't help you when you make a terrible mistake. But you know who is real? Cronus. Cronus is real, and Cronus is in your face, and he's not gonna get out until you know what happened."

"Cronus is gonna lose some teeth if he keeps goin on like this talkin' to me with such disrespect in my own house." Dr. Vantas(PHD) Texas'd. 

Cronus had not anticipated using his usual style of pursuasion on someone who could Texas when he could only New Jersey in response, but he was an adaptable lad. "Lady I'm not gonna apologize for the way I handle traumatic situations that are gonna end in people callin' the police and the two of yous burning your house down, again. Dr. Vantas(PHD), listen. Your husband did something you're never gonna forgive, and you're gonna divorce him, I figure, which is why I'm here, doin' this now."

"Are you stalling so he can help the girl he cheated on me with climb out the window? Get to the point, boy." Dr. Vantas(PHD) growled, transforming into her demonic form, massive flaming wings erupting from her back. Karkat stopped chopping vegetables and gestured to her like a celebrity hand model, urging Kanaya to behold, which she did. He resumed struggling to cut the eggplant as she gawked. 

"No, Dr. Vantas(PHD), I'm makin' you really angry on purpose so when you find out what actually happened you calm down. He fucked up and got trapped by some loser kids into doing a demonic deal and now he's young and super sexy for some reason I don't understand. He's in Kankri's room. Go tear his clothes off, get it girl."

"Wait, what?" Dr. Vantas(PHD) asked in confusion. 

"Your husband made Jesus cry so now he's sexy, I neither make nor understand the rules. Please go forgive him and have makeup sex after he apologizes for not telling you."

Dr. Vantas(PHD) stepped around Cronus with her mouth agape, unable to respond to his perplexing behavior in any meaningful way or comprehend his speech. As she passed, he grabbed a pitcher he'd filled from the five gallon reservoir of holy water the family kept onhand to prevent housefires and splashed it all over Dr. Vantas(PHD) so she wouldn't burn the house down again. 

"Cronus, is this how you convinced my dad to stop fighting about Kankri's gender Identity?" Karkat asked. 

"Yes, except we actually broke out into a fistfight." Cronus said, taking a superhero stance with his shoulders rolled back and his hands on his hips. 

"Is this what you did with your parents every time you got in trouble? Blew it out of proportion and acted like it was way worse than it actually was, and acted really annoying and confrontational so that when they found out what happened they'd be too confused, exasperated, underwhelmed with the truth, and exhausted from the adrenaline dump you engineered to even attempt to punish you?" Rose asked.

"Also yes." Cronus said. 

"Eridan does it too", Karkat said flatly, throwing his eggplant slices into salt. "Eridan does it to me", he said, flipping the slices to ensure an even coating of salt before setting them aside on a bed of paper towels. "This is probably why his parents are crazy and his dad went on a killing spree."

"Naw, they were crazy before I was born, my Yaya told me so." Cronus said. "I've done nothing wrong, I'm a good boy."

Kankri walked out from his bedroom into the kitchen as his parents began to fight in there. Cronus got out his phone, connected to an expensive looking bluetooth speaker and put on his heavy metal screamo playlist to drown out the argument even though absolutely nobody in the house liked it, not even Kanaya. Nobody argued, because it was less awkward than hearing the Vantases fight about Karam's mistakes. When the girls finished helping Karkat prepare the rollatini, they both shook hands with him and walked to the bus station wordlessly, mostly because they were both temporarily deafened by the loud music. As they rode the bus together back toward Rose's house, Kanaya put her arm over Rose's shoulder, as if trying to convey to her that she no longer believed Rose was just lying to be spooky. Rose leaned against her with a smile, knowing that this was the case as she had just shown Kanaya a real live demon and also Cronus acting weird. 

Dirk was trapped there for the rest of the evening, never truly sure when it'd be safe to peek out. When he finally got home, Roxy and Dave, both ravenous, tackled him like wild dogs and tore the taco bell from his arms, sitting down on the floor and eating it straight out of the bag in hungry desperation. Roxy cried a little.


	25. Rose and Kanaya are Interrupted by Tech N9ne

Rose and Kanaya were about to do some more spooky dooky bullshit the next day, but when they entered the house, Dirk was standing on the kitchen counter, hollering like a hype man to Roxy, Dave, Karkat, Jade, Jake, John, Jane, Sollux, Terezi, Eridan, and Feferi. 

"Yes that's right pathetic children, one of my mysterious parents visited the lalonde strider household during the school day and left for us a cornucopia of expensive treats to try to buy back our love, and now I need all of you to take some because there's way too many for just our family, but only if you really want to go because I'm not going to give them away to sell them, because like that's fucked up, man. My parents are trying to buy my love, not yours. Dirk Strider retains sole rights to sell these tickets. Who wants to see Tech n9ne live in concert?" He gestured to the tickets and around to the hapless children he'd assembled for the opportunity. 

"I can't see anything." Terezi said with a fake frown, as if dirk had actually hurt her feelings. Dirk almost fell for it, before remembering she did this with every visual based figure of speech. 

"Oh my God, Terezi, will you stop?" John moaned, exasperated. 

"No." Terezi said firmly, slapping at John. "Everyone but me is enrolling in drivers ed and getting ready to start a new chapter in their lives with boundless freedom and I still have to take the goddamn bus everywhere, stop telling me what to feel." The room fell silent as everyone thought Terezi was serious for a second. The silence was briefly interrupted as Feferi sniffed, then resumed for another awkward silent expanse. "Ha. Bitches." She laughed, perceiving they'd fallen for her ruse once again. Terezi wasn't even sure she was kidding this time, but assumed she was. 

"Alright losers, who wants to go to the tech n9ne concert?" Dirk asked again without the visual metaphor. 

Children started raising their hands, hooting and hollering, but Rose interrupted them. "You didn't invite the biggest tech n9ne fans we know, Dork. I mean, Dirk, but I was also right the first time when I technically mispoke. Latula and Gamzee aren't here." 

"I'm here." Dave asserted. "I love tech n9ne." 

"Gamzee is easily a much bigger fan than you even if Latula might not be." Rose said. 

"Latula is definitely a bigger fan than Dave. I saw her in clown paint once or twice, which Dave has done uh... Never?" Roxy said. 

"Now now, children. Stop bullying Dave. Call these losers up and I'll give them a crack at the tickets." 

Rose and Roxy started calling up their buddies. Feferi raised her hand, waving it slightly for Dirk's attention. He nodded to her, and she asked her question. "Can I borrow your room while we wait for Gamzee to get here?" Feferi asked. 

"Why?" Dirk asked in return, peering over his glasses.

"Becaaaaause." Feferi said coyly blushing. 

Dirk threw a condom at her. "Throw the sheets in the hamper when you kids are done, ok?" 

Sollux and Feferi looked at the condom, then at each other, then at the condom again, then each other again. Sollux grabbed the condom and turned to walk up the stairs, but feferi said in a flat voice, "nevermind, I think we just broke up."

Sollux turned back to face the rest of the room. "Well ladies", he lisped, "I am still going upstairs. I hope to see one of you there." He went ahead and saw himself up the stairway.

"Ha! Loser!" Terezi laughed. She quickly turned to Karkat, whispering harshly. "Which way are the stairs? I wanna make out with Sollux for the sole purpose of making Feferi feel like she's missing out. She has stolen a fair number of things from my home and I hate her." 

"That's a fucking terrible reason to make out with Sollux. I refuse to assist you." Karkat stated. 

"Here, Terezi. Let me help you." Dave said, leading Terezi to the stairs. To everyone's surprise, feferi remained seated. 

Awkwardly, after a long pause, Jane finally asked. "Uh, feferi? Is everything ok?" 

Feferi sobbed as Sollux and Terezi began to make noises upstairs. She cried out, "I thought I loved Sollux but when I thought about touching his wiener I got grossed out and scared instead of excited. I think I might be gay!" Rose and Kanaya immediately started to comfort her, shooshing her, hugging her and patting her back comfortingly. 

"It's ok, like everyone in this house is gay except for Roxy, Jade and Karkat." Dirk said comfortingly. 

John and Jane both raised their hands. "Im straight, actually." Jane said. 

"I am not a homosexual." John asserted. 

"Actually, I'm straight too." Eridan said with his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze cast to the floor.

"Ok, so a lot of us are straigh-" dirk started, but Roxy cut him off. 

"I'm actually very gay." Roxy said. 

"But you're only interested in dudes." Rose responded. "You've only ever crushed on men." 

"I'm homogay for dudes. I just came out as transgender." Roxy announced, taking a power stance. 

"I'm not straight either." Karkat said. "I'm like, super bisexual." Dave looked at him, letting his sunglasses fall down his nose. 

"Alright, is there anyone else who's sexuality I should know about?" Dirk asked, looking around the room. Jake shook his head, then gave him a playful wink and double gun fingers. 

"Alright, it's ok Feferi, everyone in this house is gay except for John, Jane, Eridan and Jade. It'll be ok." Dirk said, correcting his earlier statement. Eridan gave a thumbs up. 

"But I don't know if I'm gay?!" Feferi sobbed. "I liked kissing him." 

"Well now he's kissing Terezi, so you should go upstairs and break up with him." Karkat said calmly. 

"I already broke up with him so I wouldn't have to have sex!" Feferi cried. "That's why he's kissing Terezi! I'm not allowed to be sad, but I am anyway! I've made a horrible mistake!" 

Dirk sank into the shadows, realizing he had ruined everything, especially Feferi's day. He handed all the tickets to Roxy, saddling him with all the responsibility, and slunk up the stairs to borrow Dave's room for a hardcore sulk session. Jake followed him because Jake is an idiot. Sollux and Terezi grew louder and louder, and the children sat in silence while they underage fucked like a pair of gorillas infected with a version of rabies that makes you fuck things instead of biting them. The lesbians comforted Feferi. Dave started trying super hard to talk to Karkat while Jade aggressively deflected his bisexual advances. Karkat began to sweat audibly. Finally, with a triumphant knock on the door, Gamzee, Tavros, and Kurloz showed up together, immediately followed by Latula and Mituna.

Terezi came wobbling down the stairs crying, her clothes in a state of dishevelment, and sobbed. "guys I need help. I liked it. I like Sollux." She screamed, her heart pierced by this horrible reality. "I don't want to like Sollux, he's a gross nerd, I don't think he's ever been outside before, he tried to do a fortnite dance while we were on the bed, he has bad teeth and he doesn't shower, but I just took his dick and it was bomb as fuck. Heeeeeelp." She wailed.

"I can help." Eridan said. "I'm a worthless nerd too but I have good teeth, use deodorant, and wash my balls every day. You can fuck me instead." 

Terezi sniffled hard. "No Eridan, it's just not the same." 

Eridan nodded with sadness. Nobody pitied Terezi because of her horrible actions, except for Latula, but only because she understood her problems completely from having the exact same issues with Mituna, who also had bad teeth, did fortnite dances and didn't shower. Feferi scoffed at her sadness. 

"I mean if the strilonde household is already a morally questionable dungeon of underage sex, you can fuck me and see if maybe it's not Sollux and you just like sex in general, like with anyone." John offered to the girl.

"Yeah, see?" Jane offered. "maybe it's not that bad, maybe you're just a slut." 

"What the fuck did I walk into?" Kurloz asked. Gamzee and Tavros both shrugged in response. 

"How much does a room cost in this bitch?" Gamzee asked. Tavros and Kurloz both looked at him and shook their heads. Gamzee honked in disappointment.

Terezi sobbed loudly, but took John upstairs. Roxy sat on the couch away from the gaggle in Dirk's spot, where he could hear himself think, counting the tickets. Eventually, all the children came back downstairs except for John and Terezi, and Roxy gave them the good news. "guys, check it out, there's enough tickets here for every single one of us to go, and I can still take Aranea if I want!" He announced. The children cheered. Most of them didn't really care about tech n9ne, they just wanted to have fun at a concert. 

Finally, John and Terezi emerged from the bottom of the stairs. "It's not Sollux." Terezi announced triumphantly. She took a power stance and continued her announcement. "I don't like Sollux, I just like dick. I'm a big fat nasty ho. Take a fucking shower, Sollux." 

"Hooray! Take a fucking shower, Sollux!" Everyone but Sollux, Feferi and Eridan cheered. John cheered the most, because he'd just nutted and that made him feel extra fantastic about the situation. 

"Fuck yeah Sollux take a goddamn bath you nasty trash!" John screamed, pumping his fist with the same level of enthusiasm he'd just used to pump Terezi's plush rump. 

"A big fat nasty ho who's coming to the tech n9ne concert with us!" Roxy hollered, maintaining the hype. All the children cheered louder. 

Eridan approached Terezi again. "Excuse me, since you've had a moment of empowerment and realized you're very sexually liberated, and I just so happen to have a dick, do you think, perchance, maybe I could..." 

She put her finger to Eridan's lips. "Hoes can still say no, Eridan." 

"Can you please explain why not, at least? It's a bit embarrassing to be rejected by a thot who literally just banged two of my friends." He said through squished lips against her firm and uncompromising fingie. 

"You give me the creeps, dawg. I feel like if I sleep with you, you're gonna insist on wearing your mom's bra and higheels and I might wake up in the morgue afterwards." 

"Awwww", Eridan whined self pityingly. 

"Please be nice to Eridan, he's honestly pretty cute." Feferi said meanly. Eridan immediately began to orbit her without a moment's hesitation, sucked directly into her gravitational pull. It was just as she planned, surely this would make Sollux agree to resume their age appropriate nonsexual makeout relationship. Because her mother was a famous horror novelist, she was immune to horror of most kinds and Eridan didn't frighten her the way he did everyone else, so the looks of fear and concern this drew from the other children perplexed her. After everyone but Karkat said a quiet prayer for Feferi's safety, the children resumed their cheers and loaded into the old vw bus the strilondes parents had left at the house for such occasions. Eridan made absolutely sure to sit next to Feferi and pull that dumb dick move where you put your arms over the seat backs so you can technically have it over your crush's shoulder. Feferi appeared bewitched to be receiving attention from a young man who showered and washed his balls.

Dirk drove, and Jake took shotgun both so he could keep wiggling his eyebrows at him and angling himself so he could jiggle his mesmerizing ass, and also because he had brought an actual shotgun and felt this uniquely qualified him for the seat. Karkat watched, transfixed, while biting his lip, at the gyrations of Jake's magical ass, until Jade started twerking at him in much the same manner so that he would pay attention to her instead. Gamzee honked in varying states of confusion at the thick mist of teen hormones filling the vehicle that weren't coming from Tavros, who he had thought was dating him until he'd pressured him to have sex in front of a room full of people. Kurloz desperately wished he had stayed home, but knew he'd be able to sell like, a fuckload of drugs at this concert and that he, Gamzee, and his hungry mama would eat like royalty for the rest of the year, their house no longer smelling like AIDS and cat pee as long as he used this clusterfuck of stupid children to sheild his activities from the watchful eyes of concert security. 

They finally arrived, dirk dropping them off so he could go find parking, everyone but Jake disembarking. The night was young, the excitement about to begin.


	26. Gamzee Learns Juggallo History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if Roxy's coming out speech last chapter was sudden, I just finished with the meat path epilogue and was really excited Roxy was trans in canon. I hadn't considered this possibility before the canon reveal, which to be fair even the canon reveal concludes in the text would have been unlikely for the readers to have decided. 
> 
> Anyway big TW this chapter, extremely public murder suicide.

As the kids leapt with Glee out of the vehicle to run off and have a wonderful time bopping to some high quality hip hop beats delivered by a man wearing a mask that looks like face paint, Roxy spotted Aranea waiting for him on the corner and the two ran to each other and then off into the crowd to have a wonderful time. The rest of the children rushed inside together in a pack, dragging Terezi so they wouldn't lose her in the unwashed throngs. Kurloz watched from a distance to ensure that the crew was about to cause a big ass motherfucking ruckus, and once he was sure they would just like always, he slunk off by his lonesome to use an unofficial entryway to the venue so he wouldn't get caught with his assortment of illegal party enhancers. 

The children were having a good ass time as some other bands opened for the big man himself as Gamzee's nose crinkled and he surveyed the crowd, noticing a lot of other individuals in high contrast face paint, but also hatchet gear. It dawned on him- Juggallos and Juggalettes as far as the eye could see, and also Sollux' dad with Vriska's mom, which he pointed out to both Sollux and Mituna. "Dudes, my guys, why is your dad here?" He asked them both. 

"He likes to party, I guess." Mituna said with a shrug. 

"He's dating another fat chick." Sollux said nonchalantly. "he has been dating progressively fatter women since our mom died of a heart attack. It's like he's trying to replace her, but no one woman will fill the hole in his heart, and dating two women is socially unacceptable, so he's specifically targeting women that are the approximate mass of two or more women. If he actually brought them home I might be worried, but he usually only takes them to buffets so I don't care." 

"That's Vriska's mom, though, she's married." Gamzee pointed out. 

"I hardly see how that's my dad's fault." Sollux said with a shrug.

Gamzee agreed with Sollux's assessment that his father had done nothing wrong since it's not like he was still married, the blame was with Vriska's mom. That off his mind, Gamzee resumed in his disdain of his horrorcore brethren. "Dude, what the motherfuck." He growled. "What are all these Juggallos doing here?" He asked no one In particular.

Dave stepped in immediately, assuming he was the most qualified to explain this situation. "Gamzee, Tech N9ne literally is a Juggallo. He performed at the gathering of the Juggallos every year until they beefed and then he only missed the one year because of it. He's a respected member of Juggallo culture." 

"That's not true!" Gamzee shouted back. "He's just horrorcore, he does his own thing and he is not a Juggallo, Dave. Why would an established artist identify himself as part of the fanbase for another artist? That'd be weird." 

"He's a Juggallo, Gamzee. What other horrorcore artist does face paint?" Dave asked, the tensions rising between them. Several Juggallos and Juggalettes had gathered round in hopes of keeping the argument from escalating. The other children saw what was about to go down and scattered, except for Tavros, who readied the camcorder feature on his phone so he could film Dave and Gamzee getting into a fistfight, which was inevitable. 

Rose and Kanaya held hands and sauntered toward a merch booth to obtain memorabilia of this event, but were shocked to see Roxy and Aranea speaking to Damara's ghost. They also saw Vriska's mom with Mr Captor, which Rose pointed out to Kanaya as they passed her. They approached together, since ghosts are spooky dooky and Rose could not get enough of that shit. Kanaya, admittedly, was a little spooky dooky herself, but tended to prefer stuff like vampires and serial killer stories, however she would gladly do some ghost stuff with Rose again. Unfortunately, she remembered as they approached the exact ghost she had seen before that she'd continued to insist that ghosts weren't real even after meeting a fucking ghost, then felt socially awkward, embarrassed, and also grateful that Rose hadn't thought to beat her over the head with that the last time they had argued. Damara, Aranea, and Roxy all gave a friendly wave. Aranea and Roxy had clearly traded their clothes at some point after entering the venue and painted their faces to fit in with the fans. 

"Wow!" Rose said stupidly and without a hint of tact, excited and confused to see a real ghost at a concert. "I didn't realize ghosts got out and had fun!" 

"Yeah, we do!" Damara said. "there's probably like thousands of us in here?" She added, her inflection revealing how rude she felt rose had been. "We don't have to pay for tickets and people usually don't actually notice that we're dead unless they see us in a spooky hallway or something where another person shouldn't be. You probably see six dead people every time you ride the bus, doofus." Damara limply waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. "The important part is that I feel self conscious about not being able to wear face paint here. Or change out of the clothes I died in. This is honestly a big bummer, I hate this dress now." 

Rose nodded. "We could try getting you a mask." Kanaya offered. "you did throw stuff that one time, I'm sure you could use your ghostly abilities to hold up a mask. The big man himself does it because it doesn't take as long to put on, they probably have some at the merch booth." Damara looked off to the left, trying to imagine herself holding a paint mask up. 

"Yeah, that's worth a shot." She said. They all waddled in the direction of the merch booth where Rose and Kanaya had originally intended to head, except for Damara, who floated because the option is available to her. 

Roxy held back, holding Aranea's arm, and typed some text into her phone so she could have a semiprivate conversation over the noise of a concert. "we need to find Damara's baby so she can move on, that girl is miserable." Aranea read the text and agreed, reaching out and selecting "👍" to indicate her feelings on the matter.

She retrieved her own phone and opened messenger to text, since this bitch was loud as fuck and full of feisty Juggallos. "we should let her have fun at the concert, though. We should all focus on having fun at the concert, but especially her, since she is literally dead, which is a huge bummer." She typed. Roxy sent "🥰 u rite bae". Roxy often seemed to call her bae, which she thought was a little weirder the longer they continued not dating. Either way, the four girls and Roxy stood now in the merch line, awaiting overpriced goods. 

On the other side of the venue, Eridan was feeling fresh new excitement and weaving a bold plan for the progression of his evening. He had Feferi's attention, he had never received real human affection from an unrelated female before, and before he left this event he was determined to lose his kissless virgin status and become at the bare minimum a kissed virgin, sex king of his discord server. He gently lead her away from her friends, but unbeknownst to him, Sollux was watching with jealousy. 

Sollux had never intended to do anything at all with Terezi upstairs, and had, in truth, been seething since Feferi decided to break up with him over the condom earlier that night. He had proposed they just make sex noises so Feferi would get jealous, come upstairs to fight her and then she'd realize she was still into him and they're resume dating. That was his entire plan in inviting the other females upstairs at all. Unfortunately, what had happened instead was that Terezi had insisted sitting on his lap would help with realism, and then she said actually making out would help with realism, and then she actually bounced on his lap until he jizzed in his pants and ran into the strilonde family bathroom in a state of embarrassment to mop his shame away with 2ply. Sollux had no desire to splooge in, on or near his brother's girlfriend's little sister, no matter how cool she had seemed before she announced to all present that he had bad teeth and worse hygene. She had also announced that his dick was bomb, which gave her some hope of reconciliation if she decided to resume being cool at some point in he future, but he was still mad now. He watched as Eridan started to give his girlfriend sloppy and unpracticed nerd kisses, Feferi tensing up because she really didn't want them, but too polite to push him away. Sollux's hands balled into furious fists screaming out for contact with a chunky boy's jawbone to slam at nerd rage Mach ten- or barring that, some drywall. As Eridan begged for her to give him a kiss back, she cleared her throat, taking a step back and holding his hand while pointing off across the room. "Eridan, look. Mrs. Serket is letting Mr. Captor sit in the basket of her rascal because he couldn't find a seat. How charitable and distracting!" She said with false glee. 

"Oh, shit." Eridan said. "They're cuddling. I hope Vriska's dad doesn't find out." 

Little did they know, Vriska's dad had already found out, and all hell was about to break loose. Mr. Captor and Mrs. Serket had been featured on the jumbotron making out at a baseball game the previous weekend, and a coworker had just shown the footage to Mr. Serket at work today. He had just given his car to the valet and stepped into the venue to seek out his unfaithful wife and her bony boo. 

A wave of violence swept across the auditorium as Gamzee and Dave's argument over whether Tech N9ne was a Juggallo escalated, Gamzee slamming an open fist against Dave's angular cheekbone and sending his entire body spinning off to the left with surprise. Around them, shocked Juggallos whooped. 

At the same time, Eridan had tired of the distraction and had resumed engaging Feferi in a makeout that was entirely halfassed from her end. Sollux's rage finally bubbled over and he approached them with a supernatural speed, his fist slamming Eridan's chunky jawbone with enough force to wipe out the dinosaurs. 

A gunshot rang out in the venue, and people ran, screeching, trampling each other to get away from Vriska's dad, who stood over Mr. Captor's rapidly cooling remains as a rich red puddle spread from his lanky husk. Vriska's mother's scream rose above the sounds of the concert, and a second gunshot rang out as Gamzee continued just beating the everloving fuck out of Dave, his would be Juggallo saviors and Tavros long gone. 

"Gamzee! Stop! We need to run! There's a shooter!" Dave pleaded through bruised lips.

"Honk!" Was gamzee's only reply as he straddled his chest and continued to beat his ass, years of rage about numerous off-putting interactions he and Dave had channeling into his knuckles. "Hooooooonk!" He screeched as Mr. Serket's Newly vacated body fell limply to the floor beside his wife's and her lover's. 

From the stage, Tech N9ne himself surveyed the wreckage. He tapped the mic twice, then brought it to his face. "Um, excuse me, but what the fuck?" He asked, gesturing to the dead trio on the floor and the two sets of idiot teenagers having two separate rolling fistfights in the nearly abandoned front half of the theatre. "the dude done shot himself. The police are gonna come here, but y'all can still have a good time." He said, urging them all to come back. "Just don't dance in the evidence. Cordon that shit off and come back here, jiggle your asses around and get drunk and high. Party's still on." Some fans raided the janitors closet for "wet floor" signs and used some novelty police line tape from the merch booth to cordon off the scene, then resumed the festivities. 

At the end of the night, everyone re-convened at the vw bus to go home. Mituna sobbed into Latula's chest because he was now a special needs orphan. Aranea, heartbroken, cried as she sat on the curb with Roxy, Rose, Kanaya and Damara's ghost. "Well," she sniffled. "I Inherit the estate now, so I won't have to worry about being poor in college." She tried to be strong, but her daddy had just straight up killed her mommy in front of her while she was trying to enjoy a good time with her friends, so she ultimately didn't and ended up crying into all of her friends' shirts alternatingly.

Kurloz, furious, carried Dave's battered body over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, Gamzee and Tavros beside him. The four were In utter silence, and Kurloz wore a deep scowl while the others looked fearful. 

"Uh," Tavros whimpered, finally breaking the tension. "Dave had this coming, please don't tell your mom on Gamzee." He begged. "shes gonna ground him for a long time and I don't want him to get in trouble." 

"I AIN'T EVEN MAD ABOUT THAT!" Kurloz screamed. "I'M PISSED OFF CAUSE JUGGALOS ARE POOR. I AIN'T MADE SHIT TONIGHT!" he hollered, chunking Dave into one of the van's seats. 

"But they love weed!" Tavros exclaimed sympathetically. 

"THEY CAN'T AFFORD IT!" Kurloz bellowed, then began to cry over his crushed hopes and dreams. 

In the back seat, Sollux and Feferi had already resumed making out. John, Jane, Jade, and Karkat stood gathered around, gesturing with confusion. "Does he know his dad died?" Jane asked with genuine concern. 

"Someone has to tell him." John said firmly. 

"He knows." Karkat said with immense disappointment. 

"Yeah, I told him earlier thinking that he didn't and it turned out he's known the whole time." Jade said, her voice hollow with genuine sadness. "I don't think he cares." 

"He doesn't." Karkat said, holding Jade's hand for emotional support. 

"That's horrible." Jane gasped.

"No, that's Sollux." Karkat sighed. "Two days from now the weight of what he's done and what transpired will hit him and he will sink into a deep depression, and one week from now I will push his sweaty unwashed bedbound ass into the shower, turn it on, and slam the door, trapping him inside clothes and all. That's what happened with his mom, then with the news that Mituna wasn't going to make a full recovery. Sollux doesn't process terrible things in a timely fashion, just let him be happy sucking his dumb girlfriend's face. Besides, they all left in ambulances, we're not sure who's dead and who's ok. Maybe his dad is waking up in the hospital now." 

"He's not, Karkat." Jade said. 

"That guys dead as hell." John said. 

"MAYBE HIS DAD IS WAKING UP IN THE HOSPITAL NOW." Karkat said much louder, which made it much more likely to be true. The J team excepting Jake beheld each other, determining whether to keep impressing reality on Karkat, and silently agreed that they would not. 

As Dirk and Jake finally approached, Jake with his shorts on backwards and dirk with his shirt inside out, dirk stopped and kicked at something in front of the vehicle. "Oof", the thing he kicked at said. It was Eridan, lying with his head in front of the tire. 

"Uh, dude, no." Dirk said. Jake concurred that Eridan must move, his arms crossed over his chest. Eridan focused on making the saddest pout he possibly could with a huge throbbing black eye, his lips wibbling with depression. Dirk gave Jake a nod, and without a word, he hucked him into the van unceremoniously and slammed his ass back into the shotgun position. Dirk hopped into the driver's seat. "Everybody had a good time, right?" He asked with an excited tone.

After a long silence, Jake muttered, "I want you to know that I personally had an amazing time." 

"Good." Dirk said.


	27. Damara Finds Her Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: slur use- bitch and slut, slutshaming

Cronus wiped down the counter of his family's restaurant, still wearing his Chef Milo greeknamopolous costume even though he was really fucking halfassing it at this point. Though the entire family knew that food network chefs are supposed to leave after a week to return to their duties and Cronus knew they could not possibly buy it anymore, Yaya had broken the silence and explained loudly enough for the entire restaurant to hear that the lack of cameras had alerted everyone to the fact that this was not a food network project and that it was obvious 'the fabulous chef Milo' was mentally ill and just pretending to be a food network chef. She had forgiven him on the family's behalf while 'mr. burgerton' stared unhingedly from the corner of the kitchen, and invited Cronus to continue working in their kitchen since his burgers were good and making the family a lot of money, she had only asked he stop using his alter ego. Despite her request, Cronus had insisted on continuing to use the costume, continuing to wear the nerdy glasses and show up with his hair all nerdy and fluffy like a tool on the grounds it would stop his own family from recognizing him, which they all pretended worked so that they wouldn't go back to losing money. They had sunk into a daily rythm, which was broken as Vriska approached the counter. "Hey, listen", she said, holding out a wedding invitation. "My dad shot my mom and her boyfriend, but they lived, and now they're getting married because he killed himself so now nothing is stopping them, not even their better judgement. They specifically requested that the staff of this restaurant attend the wedding."

"What's that? Catering I heard?" Cronus said in a quarter-assed rendition of his chef Milo voice, which was barely not his regular voice to begin with. 

"No." Vriska said. "Just invitations, for you and your family."

"Ahh, I can bring my family?" Cronus said, still pretending they weren't in the room with him right then. "I'll have to buy suits for my husband and kids."

"Cronus, stop." she hissed. 

"Cronus? I've never heard of him." 

"Just make sure Eridan, your mom, your grandma and your boo are dressed nice, OK?" She insisted.

Elias approached. "Catering? Did I hear we're catering a wedding?" he asked.

"You know what? You call my mom and ask her, I doubt she won't pay for extra food." she said, palming her face so forcefully that it displaced her eyepatch. The disguised Ampora patriarch immediately dialed the future Mrs. Captor to confirm that she wanted Cronus's burgers at her wedding, offering sample sliders. 

Vriska sat down, and Eridan sat down next to her even though he was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom, which he did not intend to do. Now that he had managed to actually touch a girl, he was thirsty as fuck, and his terrible feelings about Vriska didn't feel as important as continuing to touch a girl did. He put his hand on her shoulder sympathetically, having specifically remembered both that she was in an emotionally vulnerable position and that she thought his brother was hot. Being the brother of a dude she thought was hot gave him a fighting chance at also being hot, since generally speaking brothers are quite alike from an aesthetic standpoint. She turned and looked to him with some degree of receptivity, which he attributed to his dramatic weightloss and meager time spent at the gym. He'd pulled at least seven different muscles to get this exact outcome. 

Meanwhile, at the Serket household, Roxy and Damara were both trying to comfort Aranea about the series of upsetting changes in her life and the very sudden and poorly planned impending wedding ceremony, presumably to be followed by the captors moving into their much bigger and nicer house. "It's just so sudden", Aranea sobbed to her friends. "They're like, literally still in bandages, my dad's not even buried yet he's still getting embalmed! Why are they getting married?!" 

"shhhh. shhh." Roxy said, cradling her.  
"Shhhhhh." Damara said, unable to physically participate.

"Shhh." the future Mrs. Captor urged from down the hall.

"No mom I'm not gonna sh! You're a slut!" Aranea cried. 

"Don't call me a slut while I'm on the phone, honey." the future Mrs. Captor urged. 

"Octavia, you can't let your kids call you names, it's disrespectful. Tyler, apologize for calling your mother a slut." Mr. Captor insisted.

"NO!" Aranea yelled, sobbing deeply. Roxy patted her more, but she was not comforted. 

There was a loud honk as none other than the big man Tech N9ne himself pulled into the driveway, his roadies immediately hopped out and began setting up speakers and shit. When he heard that the couple had survived, he'd offered to officiate their wedding, and had apparently taken that promise very seriously. Roadies and friendly juggallos swarmed out to start decorating the manicured backyard which the late Mr. Serket had personally imported a swarm of undocumented workers to establish and maintain. Jesus, Jorje and Manuel all wept from the shadows as the posse of mentally unstable clowns began ruining all their hard work with garish violence related imagery, really scary looking flower displays and a ten foot decorative faygo fountain featuring several different colors of constantly flowing soft drink separated by plastic dividers. Soon after, wedding guests began to file in- a massive gathering all things considered, least of all the popularity of the individual members of the couple. Before long, The brothers Captor flooded into Aranea's room seeking refuge from the happenings. Damara and Roxy looked to them with stinkfaces, Aranea waved.

"Hello." Sollux said detatchedly. Mituna stood in his little suit on the obvious verge of tears.

"What's wrong, Mituna?" Damara asked.

"Vriska's gonna be my sister." he wibbled. Latula approached from the hall, looking relieved to find the young men. She joined them as Aranea put on her suitcoat to look prepared to attend the wedding. 

"What's wrong with Vriska being your sister?" Aranea asked. Sollux looked nervous and wouldn't speak. Mituna began openly sobbing. Latula shrugged. 

"It's not like she's the only sister you'll get." Aranea said with a coy smile.

"You have another sister?" Sollux asked incredulously. Aranea stopped smiling. Roxy looked unamused. Damara crossed her arms over her chest. "Is it the ghost girl?" Sollux asked.

"No dumbass, you know me, you hung out with my sister, like every single day since second grade until you got in trouble for exploring our neighbor's house and calling it tomb raider archaeology quest or something remarkably stupid like that and my mom said you and Aradia weren't allowed to hang out anymore."

"Hey, if we hadn't done that, nobody would have known she was dead and her body would have been eaten by cats. Really, we performed a public service." Sollux said, his arms also crossed over his chest.

"You also tried to steal several things from her, and her daughter was extremely upset." Damara replied.

"I've said it once and I've said it again, you can't steal things from dead people." Sollux said, then quickly added "no offense."

"You can definitely steal things from dead people." Aranea said flatly, trying to defend Damara. Roxy shrugged, unsure whether or not you could call taking stuff from a dead person stealing or not.

Vriska walked in on the meeting, dragging Eridan along, who looked visibly uncomfortable. "What's crack-a-lackin', nerds?" she asked. Despite knowing that she was about to attend a wedding, she appeared to be wearing a tshirt from hot topic with the hatchetman on it, oversexualized juggalette makeup, low rise tripp pants that showed off her buttcrack and muffin top to the whole world and her special eyepatch she'd bedazzled in the shape of a skull. Eridan was wearing a suit like a regular wedding attendee.

"Uhhhh..." Roxy said. Mituna cried openly, but louder, while Latula patted his back and made a concerned expression. 

Finally, Damara said it. "What the fuck are you wearing?" she asked.

"Appropriate clothing for a horrorcore themed wedding?" She said with a raise in pitch indicating she was asking a question even though she was definitely making a statement. "What are you losers wearing?"

"Clothes." Aranea responded. 

"Yeah, clothes." Latula said, nodding. Mituna sobbed loudly. 

"I'm wearing the stink of existential angst, just like every other teenager. Let's fucking go to this wedding." Damara said. the gang shuffled outside toward their horrible fate together, seeing that Vriska was indeed correct and that dressing like they'd rolled in the 2005 hot topic discount bin would have been a better choice. 

"Too late now, I'm already handsome." Roxy lamented. 

"You'd still be handsome if you had dressed appropriately for the wedding." Vriska insisted.

"No, he would not." Aranea said immediately. 

They looked out into the large crowd, seeing an older juggallo couple with a toddler in facepaint. Damara immediately flew over to them. "Guys! I found my baby! Everythings OK, I can pass on to the afterlife now!" She yelled excitedly. 

"Yay!" Aranea cheered. 

"We're happy for you, Damara! Rest in peace." Roxy called after her. Damara stayed with the baby, cooing and playing with them.

The rest of the children gathered to watch the wedding, which was interrupted several times by Mituna's endless and unbroken sobbing, as well as Latula's hushed utterances of "babe" and "It's OK" as she patted the boy's back. In addition to being upset about the events of the previous days and the nature of this horrible wedding, he was also appalled to have Vriska as a sister due to her terrible personality and horrible behavior and could not contain his grief. Sollux also began to ugly cry for exactly the same reasons as well as being upset to have Octavia as a stepmother, but blamed all of his embarrassing noises on Mituna, which was completely plausible because in addition to looking alike, brothers also tend to sound alike, as Vriska would learn later that evening. Aranea kept her arms crossed over her chest the entire time and bit back her tears in the face of her mother hopping out of her hospital bed and directly into matrimony with her sidepiece. Vriska did not cry, because she wasn't a little bitch, she was a bad bitch, and bad bitches don't cry at weddings like little bitches do.

After a particularly loud sob that he passed off on Mituna, Sollux called out to the crowd in exasperation, "Ignore him, he has brain damage." The crowd muttered approvingly and dismissed the boy's behavior.

"I'm not crying because of my brain damage!" Mituna shrieked, but everyone ignored him, including Tech N9ne, who gave a beautiful horrorcore sermon as he wed the strange and somewhat morally outrageous couple. Everyone in attendance waddled to the reception tent for snacks and treats, including all the garden staff, who were still grieving the destruction of their hard work for a stupid clown wedding. 

As Aranea and Roxy approached the refreshments, they noticed Damara still existing on the mortal plane. Before either of them could ask about it, Damara spoke. "Yeah I decided I'm actually not finished and we're gonna kill Cronus's dad."

"That seems reasonable." Aranea replied.


	28. Damara doesn't get to murder Cronus's dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw  
> cruelty to juggallos  
> main character death

As the wedding went on, the Amporas had been busily preparing burgers in anticipation of the throng of hungry juggallos and regular upstanding human wedding guests. Thanks to Cronus manning the grill, the ceremony was aroma'd with the tantalizing scents of flamekissed beef patties. Gamzee approached the mobile grilling station with a curious honk, having been drawn in to the wedding by news that it was going to be the biggest and most embarrassing shitshow of the century and also that a big fat feeding fetish lady with a feeder kink fiance was in charge of ordering the food, which assured there'd be a large variety and also enough of it that Gamzee could very likely sneak several tupperwares full of treats home to coast on and take a little pressure off his poor busy momma who works two jobs to feed her sweet boys and keep the lights on. Gamzee was very serious about this secondary goal, and Cronus had several times slapped his hand away from a burger with his trusty patty flipping spatula to keep him from yoinking treats before it was actually time to eat. The ceremony ended, Mrs. Ampora meandered over to put buns and toppings on the sandwiches so they could streamline things, and a line of people assembled at Cronus's mobile burger bar to bother him in the hopes of getting rarer meat, when he was shocked by the sight of Damara's ghost. "Cronus" she said, holding up a ghostly knife, "Tell me where your dad is. I'm gonna murder him."

"What? YOU?!" Cronus asked, genuinely outraged. "Fuck you, nobody's murderin' my dad but me!" he yelled, grabbing a very real knife from his Yaya who was trying to prep toppings. "Scuze me yaya, mom, get Eridan on the grill I gotta go murder my father before one of his ghostly victims beats me to it."

"What?!" his mother asked in confused shock. 

"Cronus, no!" Yaya screamed, but it was too late, and he was already halfway across the food tent. Eridan looked around sheepishly, shoving his glasses up his nose, and shuffled behind the grill so they wouldn't burn any burgers while Cronus was on his bullshit. Vriska sighed, tossed her head back and rolled her eye, making a disappointed clicking noise with her tongue.

"Honk!" Gamzee exclaimed, using the confusion to grab some premade burgers for his tupperware. 

Time seemed to move in slow motion as Cronus ran across the food tent, Damara screaming "nooo" and Aranea shaking her head in disappointment as Cronus charged at his poorly disguised father to the cheers of excited juggallos and gasps of horror from regular human party guests. As if always expecting to be randomly attacked with a knife, Elias produced his own huge dagger from inside his suitcoat and blocked his son's stab. The DJ began playing the song "roundabout" by "Yes". 

 

Outside, minutes earlier, Kankri had been late to the wedding, catching only the end, noticing the smell of the burgers but failing to connect that his sexy boyfriend and his hideously dysfunctional family had been asked at the last minute to cater the event, meaning that the delicious smell was his boyfriend's burgers. He was part of the procession waddling into the tent for food when the knife fight broke out and the crowd began oohing, aahing, whooping with excitement, screaming, trampling eachother to get into or out of the tent, and calling the police. The newly appellated Mrs. Captor screamed over the crowd, "Stop! You guys are RUINING my wedding!" Mr. Captor cried out in agreement, but didn't do anything about it because he didn't feel like getting stabbed and going directly back to the hospital. 

"Cronus! Stop! What the fuck!" Kankri screamed breathlessly.

"FUCK HIM UP!" Mituna screamed. "KILL YOUR DAD!" Latula stared at his inappropriate outburst, then beheld all the excited juggallos around them and determined his behavior to be, technically, situationally appropriate. Cronus and his father hopped back and forth, knocking over tables and chairs and destroying wedding decor as they tried to stab or slash eachother, which honestly wasn't amounting to much until Cronus threw a deep fryer at his father. In his haste, his aim wasn't the best, and the hot oil spread across a cluster of power cords and started a huge fucking fire in the tent. Juggallos began to stampede out of tent in a hurry to get away from the fire, but Cronus and his dad continued to hop around the dumpster fire they'd created trying to murder eachother. 

"Cronus! Stop! The tent's on fire" Kankri yelled, not leaving either.

"You know what else is on fire? Me, with passion about killin' my dad." Cronus said.

"Why!?" Elias yelled back, continuing to try to gut his son like a fish. "I'm not even your real dad!"

"STOP. STOP FUCKING WITH ME! I KNOW YOU'RE MY REAL DAD, THE POLICE COULDN'T KILL YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE AN INVINCIBLE GIRL-EATING MONSTER AND YOU'RE GONNA FUCK WITH ME FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, I GET IT!" Cronus screamed

"What?!" Elias asked. 

"What!?" Kankri also asked. 

"IT'S GOOD, FAM, I'M HALF MONSTER MYSELF, SO I GOT THIS. WE'RE GOOD!" Cronus coughed, beginning to asphyxiate from all the gross plasticky grease smoke. His kitchen knife sank into his horrible father's chest.

"Who... told you... about the girls?" Elias choked through smoke and blood. 

"It was obvious!" Cronus wheezed. "I'm not stupid, dad, I'm smart enough..." he paused, doubling over and coughing instead of leaving the burning tent, "to figure out you were eating people, dad. I'm traumatized. Your horrible choices gave me brain problems and ruined my life."

"Eating people doesn't give you brain problems Cronus." Elias coughed. "I ran a successful law firm your entire life, could I do that with brain problems?!" 

"Yes, stop being ableist." Kankri said flatly, not choking on anything because the environment was rather similar to hell, where he belonged. 

"Yeah, fuck, you can do all kinds of shit with brain problems. Just look at the president of the United States." Cronus wheezed deliriously.

"Tru." Elias croaked with his dying breath. Cronus fell to his knees, hacking and choking, near throwing up, and began to curl into the fetal position with tears in his eyes. 

"Dude, Cronus, get up, this is a terrible time and place to rest. This tent is on fire." Kankri said frantically, running over to shake him back awake. 

Kankri could hear sirens in the distance, and realized he was at the scene of a murder. He started trying to drag Cronus out of the tent, but quickly realized they were trapped in there, the tent falling down around them. "Oh, fuck. I'm also going to die." he complained. "This is not an optimal situation, I probably should have left sooner." 

"Naw, you'll be fine." Damara droned in a disappointed monotone as she hovered in the air beside him.

Kankri thought hard, assessing the situation. "Oh, yeah, you right." he said.

"Yeah, ugh. This is just... like, I can't even?" Damara said with a series of frustrated hand gestures. 

"Yeah, I've also lost my ability to can. There's not a lot of can to go around here, there's a veritable can famine." Kankri said as the tent burnt the rest of the way down around him, leaving him standing unburnt in the open air between the charred corpses of the Ampora men. 

"Woah! Kankri's a fucking demon!?" Mituna screeched from behind the police tape holding the curious crowd away from the scene of the fire and also murder. 

Latula put her hand over his mouth immediately. "Yes, but that's not polite to say." She corrected. "If someone can't fix something in five minutes, don't bring it up at all."

"I said that he's a demon, not that he's fucking fat and ugly, Latula, I went my whole life without telling him that. It's a relevant osverbation considering a whole burned tent fell on his ass. I'm fucking sick of being condescended." 

"I'm a Christian, don't panic." Kankri shouted to the crowd who had all, en masse, just become aware he was a demon and had formerly only been aware that he was fat and ugly. The crowd was not reassured, and continued to be loud and upset. 

"I actually don't think Kankri's ugly", Aranea yelled, "Your opinion is not objective, Mituna." 

"Yeah, he's not ugly at all, what kind of ridiculous standards are you holding the poor kid to?" Latula asked.

"I mean, he used to be ugly, but he's not ugly anymore now that he got rid of the man bun, he's honestly pretty handsome now he's got a decent haircut that frames his face guys, he just needed a barber." Gamzee said. Kankri pretended that his friends were also objecting to his being called fat as well rather than only to Mituna's opinion that he was ugly as he backed away from the awkward situation. Realizing things were about to get even uglier than he'd apparently been before his haircut, he broke into a run as Gamzee added, "Why do we care about Kankri's looks right now anyway? Cronus just fucking died. HONK HONK!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCLFtxpadE 😱😱😱😱😱


	29. Gamzee meets his father

As Kankri ran off, the big man Tech N9ne himself approached the tent wreckage and gathered crowd, only to notice a skinny clown boy with a backpack full of tupperwares of catered food yelling "Cronus is fucking dead, honk honk!" The boy looked familiar, and he stopped and stroked his metaphorical beard examining the lad for his striking resemblence. 

"Hey, kid, what's your mamma's name?" he asked. 

"Ishita Makara", Gamzee replied.

"Oh, shit, you're my son." Tech N9ne said with shock. Gamzee sat on the spot, feeling very confused to have heard such a fantastic statement, since he thought that his father had died from getting shot in the subway on the way to work when he had been in second grade.

"Naw man, I don't think that's true." the small clown replied to the larger clown.

"Naw, I'm right tho. When I look at a kid I can tell whether it's my kid or not, my dude, and you're definitely my kid."

"naw, sounds improbable. I don't believe it." Gamzee said, waving a hand dismissively. As the two of them argued, Mrs. Makara drove up in a panic looking for her son. "Gamzee!? Oh my god, I just heard someone burned down this horrible wedding! What were you even doing here? Get in the car, we're going home!" She beckoned. With a compliant honk, Gamzee stepped toward the car, but Tech N9ne stopped him. 

"Bruh, wait." he waved to Mrs. Makara, who looked disgusted and refused to engage. "Hey? It's been a long time, you still mad I'm doing all this clown shit?" he asked.

"The clown shit wasn't the problem Aaron, it was finding out you were married." She scowled. "Get in the car, Gamzee, you get away from that guy right now and come home with ya momma."

"Honk!" Gamzee said, trying to wiggle over to the car again with his backpack full of food. Tech N9ne blocked him again. 

"Hey, I'm divorced now, we can reconcile. Let me hang out with my son, help out financially. This boy's over here stealing wedding food, there's no need for y'all to struggle." he offered generously.

"No! You done fucked up, A-a-ron!" she yelled. "Get in the car, Gamzee."

"No!" Gamzee shouted with all the volume and enthusiasm usually reserved for honks. "We're in no position to decline money, mom. I'm not getting in the car unless you take some delayed child support money from A-a-ron. Like, at least enough for me to go get some special kitty, clean the goddamn litterbox and buy some glade plug ins, at a bare minimum." 

"Listen to the boy, Ishita. He sounds intelligent." A-a-ron agreed. 

"YEAH! TAKE HIS MONEY!" Mituna screamed. 

"Ignore him, he-" Latula started, but Mituna clapped his hand over her mouth.

"AIN'T NOBODY CENSORING MY SHIT TODAY!" he hollered. "ANARCHY!" he pumped his fist into the air triumphantly to celebrate not having his outburst immediately invalidated.

"TAKE HIS MONEY!" sollux agreed. 

"YEAH TAKE HIS MONEY!" Mr. Captor chimed in. "BEING POOR SUCKS."

"You don't have to be poor anymore, Draven, I have a lot of wealth." the former Mrs. Serket said comfortingly.

"Oh, not anymore, I promise, you just adopted two special needs children. Mituna and Sollux both actually need very expensive medication and therapy, I make 100k a year and have decent insurance and I cap out what it'll pay by august, consistently. We haven't been able to afford a Christmas since my wife died." Mr. Captor corrected. Octavia frowned. Mituna agreed with a solemn nod. 

Octavia squeaked a little. "I mean we're pretty rich, it'll be ok."

"Wait, you consider me special needs?" Sollux asked his dad with a great degree of insecurity and alarm, his voice squeaky and cracking. "I'm in therapy about mom and Mituna, I don't take special ed classes what fresh hell is this?!"

Kurloz approached the group specifically to agree with them that being poor sucks, adding a squawk of his own and cutting off Sollux's request for reassurance. "YEAH! TAKE HIS MONEY, MOM! I NEED SHOES AND I WANT AIRPODS." he yelled.

"Kurloz what are you doing at this horrible wedding?" she asked, genuinely confused. "You aren't even friends with these horrible children."

"HE SELLS ME WEED!" Mituna screamed exuberantly. "I'M HIGH AS FUCK RIGHT NOW!"

"Dude you just narced him out to his mom, and also yourself, to your dad." Latula said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah that wasn't cool", everyone agreed unanimously.

"I don't care if Mituna's high. I'm getting high later." Mr. Captor said while shrugging. Gamzee beheld the circumstances before him, and remembered earlier, at the concert, when sollux had explained that Mrs. Serket's marital status wasn't his business. It finally dawned on him that some people are just completely fucking amoral, and that Mr. Captor and his two sons, barring some outside intervention, were completely fucking amoral. Mrs. Makara got out of her car and pinched Kurloz's ear, dragging him into the back seat while chastizing him about selling drugs and promising an enormous ass whooping for his criminal misdeeds, explaining how big a deal it'd be if he got caught by the cops. 

"You don't sell weed, do you?" tech n9ne asked Gamzee.

"No, I'm a good boy." he lied, backpack full of yoinked wedding treats. 

"Good." he said, patting his shoulder. "Can't have my boy selling weed." with that, he followed Ishita. "Hey, let me help with Kurloz. I'm a good dad!" 

Knowing it'd be a good while before everyone was done yelling at Kurloz and that he was already in trouble with his momma for going to a wedding that ended in a humongous, fatal fire specifically because Cronus Ampora had been at it and scaring her about his safety, Gamzee wandered off to go have a good time elsewhere and eat some of the wedding food. He intended to have himself a long-ass think, so he texted his momma a bunch of clown and bicycle horn emojis to indicate he had not been kidnapped, as was his quirky custom. He wandered to one of the safer, less ritzy neighborhoods where he wouldn't attract attention for existing and found himself a run down park with a squeaky swingset and had himself a sit, kicking his feet to gently swing while he considered the new information he had received. He considered how he wouldn't have been able to tell Tech N9ne was his dad if he'd been the dude who had raised him til he was in second grade, thinking hard about what he could remember of the man and whether facepaint would throw it off, and indeed concluded that he had not been raised by Tech N9ne, his father was definitely a different dude. He made a sad honk. His passing was followed a few months later by his family moving from a nicer neighborhood in New York to his current crummy neighborhood in New Jersey so his mom could be closer to her family, and it had been OK at first, but then his grandma got sick, his aunty had to go to part time to help take care of her, and his mom picked up a second job. There was no way that his mom could have lied about his dad dying to hide that he was actually Tech N9ne and also had Tech N9ne not hear about all this financial misfortune and try to help, and on top of it his dad had definitely been some kind of business guy who probably couldn't even rap. 

Gamzee retrieved one of the cake pops he'd taken from the wedding and did himself a good little motherfucking snack. He had, at first, concluded that he would happily take Tech N9ne's money even though he absolutely did not accept him as a father figure; but now, having had to look at the Captors for several consecutive hours, that seemed like something they would do. He did not want to be like the Captors, collectively as a unit or individual and separately like, even remotely. Just accepting that he was poor and his life was going to be a struggle, maybe for a while and maybe forever, might actually be more dignified than being like those people. There's some dignity in struggling because you're helping someone else, and he was worried that he'd be helping his momma very soon- working so hard was making her tired. He could live a life like that knowing that he was doing it out of love, he figured- there's no shame in suffering for love, but there's some in being an asslicker for stuff. That said, everything could get better if he convinced his momma to take the help, she could work less, not be so tired and take a well deserved break, he and Kurloz could probably go to college even though they didn't have scholarships if she'd just take the help. Then he could have kids when he grew up, maybe, and the kids wouldn't struggle either. Gamzee imagined his happy rich 'i took the Tech N9ne money' kids going to the amusement park with him and his imaginary boothing, who looked like handsome grown up Tavros, and celebrating a happy Christmas, and having a good time at the family cookout in the woods. Just as Gamzee was about to come to some kind of decision about what he should do, he was interrupted by Kankri's fat sweaty ass sitting in the swing beside him. "Shit's a mess, huh?" Kankri asked through tears, wiping them from his ash-smeared face, leaving a clean spot that made him look somehow grosser. Gamzee nodded, trying to be polite despite the interruption, and the bereaved young man continued. "It's just not fair, life's not fair, the earth's not fair, I just got my whole life destroyed, and my life was made up." he whimpered. 

"Go on", Gamzee said, making a gesture. "What do you mean your life was made up? That sounds like some mental health shit."

"I mean it's not real and it's still so unfair, like, me and Dave and Dirk and Cronus all weren't gonna tell you, but Cronus is dead and nothing matters anymore. Our lives are made up, we're supposed to be space aliens, we supposedly escaped from a worse fate but got dumped into a fake world with fucking slavery on it, and it's a shitwreck and we're living made up lives and these aren't even our real parents and I just lost Cronus and I'm not gonna have Cronus for the first time in my made up life. I wanna die." he wept into his hands.

"Yeah, shit's made up and our memories are fake, but it doesn't matter, because our feelings are real." Gamzee said. 

"What?" Kankri asked. "You knew?"

"I knew the entire time you dumbass, unlike some motherfuckers I never forgot. Why do you think I'm so at peace with my shit situation? Kankri, you're over here sobbing into your wallet, blowing your nose into hundred dollar bills and only take any heat in the airport. You're soft as fuck and I'm rolling with this better than you. You know why? Because I remember what the other option was, and that shit wasn't great for me either. Here I've got a momma and a big brother who love me instead of like, whatever the hell I had before we got here- what? The promise I was somehow better than other people because of the way I was born or whatever the fuck to keep my lone ass some company? I know I have to deal with some bullshit, but I want motherfuckers to see my life be good, because whether my personal past got made up or not, they're all real and they can suck my dick. My life sucks, Kankri, but it's good. I'd rather be here than where I was. I don't want to go home to be so lonely I'm sucking villain dick and getting slapped around just to get noticed by a motherfucker, I wanna live with my momma and my brother in New Jersey."

The revelation that everyone had been wrong about Gamzee was swallowed in the rage at Gamzee's having expressed all this animosity while he was already crying about losing his boo and his entire life being made up. "Shut up! Shut up Gamzee! Money doesn't solve problems, I can be rich and sad!" he wailed, stumbling off rapidly in a huff while crying so hard that his breaths came in a loud, embarrassing wheeze.

"Honk!" Gamzee said with a shrug, making no effort to follow the boy, since that was not what he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCLFtxpadE 😱😱😱😱😱


	30. Gamzee resumes having a dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He used to have dad  
> Now he have dad again

Gamzee walked home once he had come to his final conclusion, which was that he was gonna take A-a-ron's filthy clown lucre no matter how much like the Captors it made him, for the sake of his momma and his future children and sexy bae and also because being poor fucking sucks. He kicked in his front door with a resounding "HONK!" and found that his mother had summoned the police to their place of residence to rid it if A-a-ron and his dank stinky clown dollars. "YOUR PRESENCE IS NO LONGER NECESSARY." He told the police with his amazing command voice, eyes flashing between violet and white. 

"You right kid, we gonna leave now." Said both cops calmly, immediately leaving. 

"Momma we're taking this child support money, bare minimum." Gamzee asserted as absolutely no one reacted to his chucklevoodoos as if it were of any concern. 

"Naw! Kid, are you shitting me? My momma didn't push me out to be a side piece and I didn't push you out to be a gold digger. We're not taking this man's nice stinky money and we don't need it, we can make our own money, help your grandma and aunty and still make it. It's ok!" She insisted. 

Gamzee gestured around the house angrily, honking at all the things that were broken or could do with replacing. "NO! Momma! You deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this. Give us that smelly money A-a-ron! I'm you're kid, im definitely talented, and I need it for college and shit so in not stressing too hard to develop my craft."

"I'm a talented kid too and I want airpods A-a-ron!" Kurloz hollered from his room, which he was not to leave as he was now mega grounded for selling drugs. 

"Kids, you don't have to convince me. I'm an excellent dad and I want to throw my fat stinky money at you in disgusting wads so you can have nice things like fresh kitty litter that don't stink, a working vaccum cleaner and airpods. You've got to convince your mom I was separating from my wife at the time, like, emotionally, and she's really special and was not just my sidepiece." He said, arms crossed over his chest. 

"Mom, so what if you were a sidepiece! Side pieces don't get off work, change into different clothes and go to work somewhere else. Side pieces get to take their kids to Disney world. Don't you want to take me and Kurloz to Disney world?" He yelled, hoping his mom actually did want to take him to Disneyworld and that he wasn't imagining things.

"Yeah!" Kurloz yelled from his bedroom. "Bang this celebrity and take us to Disney world with his money!" 

"I never knew I raised y'all to be gross! What happened?" Ishita lamented. "What kind of son tries to prostitute his own mother so he can go to Disneyworld?"

"It's not hoeing if you're in a relationship, momma! Let A-a-ron take you on a date!" Gamzee screamed. 

"YEAH." Tech N9ne affirmed. "Go on a date with A-a-ron." 

"PRIDE DOESN'T PAY OUR BILLS MOMMA JUST MARRY TECH N9NE!" Kurloz screamed. 

 

Ishita rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine. But we're doing a paternity test so I have legal proof you're on the hook for my boys and if I find out I'm a side piece again I'm taking so much child support you're gonna be running after the garbage truck with a shopping list." 

"OOF." Tech N9ne said. 

"Wait, boys plural? Tech N9ne is my dad too?" Kurloz asked. 

"What kind of fucked up life do you think I was living? Yes, you boys have got the same dad." Ishita said, stamping her foot. 

"But we look so different!" Gamzee whined. "we just kinda assumed." 

"YOU TWO NEED TO STOP WATCHING TV ALL THE TIME." their furious momma said. 

"Kurloz just takes after her." Tech N9ne said, pointing at Mrs Makara. "Are y'all stupid? Did I make stupid sons?" 

"Well I mean I only remember Jeffrey being around for us as kids so I don't know Mom", Kurloz sneered.

"We only started dating after I found out I was a side piece and broke up!" Mrs. Makara said in self defense. 

"Yeah ok." Kurloz said, rolling his eyes. 

"I don't expect you to have an accurate memory of what I was doing while you were in preschool, Kurloz." She sneered back. 

"I thought Jeffrey was bothering you." A-a-ron said sadly. 

"Yeah he didn't believe me telling him I was spoken for because he never saw you and kept asking me on dates and shit, then I found out you were married , I got mad at you and I let Jeffrey take me on some dates, then after a while I ended up marrying Jeffrey." She explained with a shrug. "Why would I not do that? Who was I gonna avoid that for? Other than his inability to catch a hint he was a good man." 

They shrugged at each other for a few awkward minutes then decided to go get dinner and catch up about the rest of their lives apart in the absence of children. Tech N9ne threw some sticky disgusting juggallo bills on the kitchen table and told the boys to Uber eats themselves a feast. Kurloz left his room the second his mother closed the door, counted the clown money wad and immediately left with some of it, instructing gamzee to get them steak, sushi, ice cream and pizza. He immediately climbed out the window, technically following his mother's instructions not to step out the front door unless he was going to school, and came back 20 minutes later with fresh cat litter, Glade plugins and a high quality vaccum cleaner with a motor that their long-haired fluffy cat wouldn't immediately blow out by way of the tremendous power of her sheds. By the time the food had arrived, the house smelled good, the carpet looked nice, and the boys feasted in luxury while they pet their cat, who was extremely fluffy and happy about this turn of events. Between the leftovers and wedding food, their fridge was completely full. As the boys lay in a food coma, someone started frantically banging at their door. A look through the peephole revealed it to be Kankri, still filthy and sobbing. Gamzee opened the door with a flat expression. "What?" He asked. 

"You're the only one who understands!" Kankri sobbed. "You know it's fake too so you know we can do something and I need help" kankri cried. 

Kurloz raised an eyebrow as he attempted to eat another slice of stuffed crust pizza even though he was full as fuck. 

"Help with what?" Gamzee asked. 

"We gotta get Cronus back." Kankri wept. 

"Naw." Gamzee said. "Nobody's going to help you with that. 

Kurloz put out his hand in a stopping gesture. "Wait. Yes somebody is." He said. "But first you're going to actually help someone else instead of posting shit on Facebook about Injustice or whatever. You're going to use a bunch of your sick son of two doctors allowance to actually donate to charities for marginalized communities, then you're gonna help my grounded ass sneak out of the house and come to a protest with me because I have somehow never seen you at one, captain sanctimony. And then you're gonna buy me air pods." 

Gamzee sighed loudly. "A-a-ron is gonna buy you air pods." 

"Maybe he won't, maybe him and momma are having a horrible time right now." He said. 

"She'd be back by now if they were, they're probably drunk on fancy wine right now doing stuff that would gross me out if I thought about it. Kankri, you're not buying anyone airpods." Gamzee said. 

The two boys sat down with Kankri and forced him to donate thousands of dollars to charities he had posted to his Facebook wall without actually donating any money. The boys felt satisfied, and waived the protest requirement as Gamzee was able to convince Kurloz getting in even more trouble than he was already in was a terrible idea that would earn him an asswhooping. Immediately, Kankri begged. "ok, I gave you what you wanted, please help me figure out what to do about Cronus." He wailed. 

"Alright, so what we're gonna do, here's the plan Kankri. We're gonna take you to a therapist, because you are not handling this very well." Gamzee said.

"What?" Kankri said obliviously. 

"We're taking you to a therapist, like we have to, because people don't come back from the dead." Kurloz said. "What did you think we were going to do about Cronus, exactly? Do I seem like a necromancer to you?" 

"Yeah. Our dad is dead you idiot. If we could raise the dead would we ourselves have a dead family member?" Gamzee asked. 

Kankri screamed in grief, having lost no less than three thousand dollars to charitable donations that would not bring Cronus back from the dead. "but you guys are spooky!" He cried. "You're the spooky voodoo clown boys with mysterious powers." 

"I have no idea what he's talking about." Kurloz said. 

Gamzee shooshed him. "It's ok. He's just ridiculously fucking crazy, probably because he hung out with Cronus so much." He said in comforting tones as he patted Kankri's back. 

"Fuck this. I'm becoming a demon. Demons don't have to follow the laws of nature or listen to anyone." Kankri sobbed. 

"See? He's crazy as shit." Gamzee reassured. "Crazy is contageous. This is why nobody hung out with Cronus Ampora." He continued, overcompensating for the supernatural powers he was hiding from his own brother, who most certainly had similar ones he just couldn't remember because of the deal they'd made with the gods of this world in order to escape their own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCLFtxpadE 😱😱😱😱😱


	31. Kankri becomes a real fucking demon

Kankri walked away from the Makara residence wiping his face with his sleeve, ironically wiping more filth onto it on his way to stumble incoherently around town crying about his luck. Eventually, he wandered back to the site of the burned down tent, now cleaned up and marked only by a charred spot in the backyard of what was now the Captors residence, as Mrs Serket had indeed changed her name. The change in residents was already marked with a change in the state of the yard, which was now filled with all kinds of Kyle shit- broken skateboards, empty monster cans and bits of battered drywall. Feferis lingering presence had already littered the area with glittery stickers of creepily large eyed fantasy creatures that ordinary people found offputting, adding an odd element to the landscape. The filthy boy spent the night curled up under a bush that had only had a few skateboards crashed onto it and a few limited, localized puddles of monster energy drink.

In the morning, he shuffled to the funeral home at which Cronus's wake was to be held, where he was surprised to see that Rose was present, flanked on either side by Dirk wearing brass knuckles and clutching a shitty mass produced katana and Jake threateningly wielding a shotgun. Both of them wore sunglasses in an attempt to look tough. The bereaved Ampora family, except for Eridan, were ignoring them. Eridan slid closer as if to bother Rose, and Jake menacingly racked the shotgun. Anyone other than Yaya Ampora was a weird person to see a Cronus's funeral, if Kankri was to be honest with himself.

He approached, asking "why do you guys have weapons at a funeral?" 

"Rose is here to process her complicated misbeliefs about the creepiest man in New Jersey and the mysterious events surrounding his death." Jake said. 

"And we are here to end the Ampora bloodline if Eridan bothers my little sister." Dirk said, leveling his katana at Eridan's throat as he reached toward Rose with one of those football shaped folded notes kids pass in school. 

"I'm pretty sure he's not dead, or some member of the Greek pantheon is going to have to come pick him up or something. This can't be it, he was simply too weird." Rose insisted. 

"Or he was a regular, dead creep who is going to return to the earth now." Jake said. 

Kankri pushed past them numbly and sat next to Karkat, who was there to give emotional support to Eridan. "Normally one bathes before attending a funeral." Karkat said immediately. Kankri merely pawdd at him with his filthy mitt. 

Jade spoke up. "You should at least go take a french shower in the bathroom." 

Kankri sat, gesturing to Cronus's closed casket. "He didn't. He's still covered in ash too." 

hearing Kankri's words, Yaya Ampora began to sob loudly from across the room about the terrible fate of her formerly handsome ashy boys. Her daughter in law attempted to comfort her, but was greeted with strikingly powerful old lady slaps of rejection. Everyone had the sense to stop talking, except for Eridan, who reached gingerly into his Yaya's purse and retrieved a grip extention device while she and his mother were distracted, then used it to pass the note to Rose. Dirk slapped it loudly with his katana, but due to its lightweight but durable titanium construction, nothing significant happened to it and he was able to sneak the dented grip assist back into her purse. Rose was now faced with a horrible decision: open the note or hurl it into the nearest trash can. Before she could decide, a familiar man entered the room, drinking heavily from a bottle of Grey Goose™️. 

Rose shot up from her seat, the football shaped note hitting the floor. "Hermes! You have a lot of explaining to do." She said. 

 

He looked at her as if she'd forgotten something, taking another heavy drink from the bottle. 

"Please. You have a lot of explaining to do, please." She said. 

"No I fucking don't." Hermes said before approaching the coffins of the Ampora men. 

"I mean seriously though you really fucking do, my good chap."Jake said, waving his shotgun around all silly. "I'm not a top scholar of antique fictions, exactly, but isn't this totally not your job?" 

"This is super duper my job, like to an unusual degree in this specific case." He said flatly. Yaya jumped up and clung to him, crying hysterically. The only person in the room who didn't act like she saw him was Eridan's mother, who was drinking from a flask and pretending everyone around her was fucking insane for addressing some wandering homeless man in a winged hat that barged into her husband and son's joint wake. She followed her drink with a xan for good measure and quietly planned out how to move back in with her family in Greece after the funeral. The children looked to the door he'd come in through and saw a bunch of other motherfuckers they'd never seen before lingering in the doorway looking ready to throw down; some lazy looking dude actually wearing cosplay wings in his streetclothes like it wasn't a wierd decision, a tall buff and handsome snacc man in casual activewear, and another tall buff and handsome snacc man but older and 60% more goth.

Hermes finished the bottle and threw it to the ground with a crash. "Alright, if you guys don't mind I'm gonna get my shit and get out." Hermes staggered to the coffins, taking a deep breath. 

"I mind. Please wait." Kankri said, rising from his chair. 

"Jokes on you kid, I don't care if you mind." Hermes said, thrusting his hands through the lids of the coffins without breaking them, glitching through like he was about to get trapped in the backrooms before effortlessly yoinking the spirits of the Ampora men out of their charred remains. 

"BUT I CARE A LOT." Kankri yelled, his voice so loud that everyone's ears bled. With a surge of power and a Dragon Ball Z powerup pose, his body transformed as he became a real fucking demon. He grew eight inches taller, standing at a respectable six foot two as his body wreathed in flames. His fat melted away, mostly, leaving him a just a little bit pudgy but free of his moobers, and from his pelvis grew a long, thick, majestic shaft and balls, curing his dysphoria and rendering bottom surgery unnecessary. Sexy as fuck and full of new dick confidence, he leapt forward to attack Hermes and take his boothing back by force. The three backup dudes jumped out from the doorway ready to brawl.

"DUDE, KANKRI, STOP! YOU STOP AND ASK JESUS FOR FORGIVENESS RIGHT NOW!" Karkat screamed from the sidelines, hands on either side of his face as Kankri reached with his clawed hand for Cronus's ghost. "MOMS GONNA KILL YOU, AND THEN SHES GONNA KILL DAD FOR INFLUENCING YOU!" the boy panicked. 

"I DONT SEE JESUS COMING DOWN TO HELP ME!" Kankri responded before jumping into the first fistfight of his entire life, a three on one fistfight at that, like he might actually win. 

The three dudes from the doorway jumped out to strife with him. Dirk and Jake looked at Kankri, then at each other, then at their weapons, then at Rose. Rose shrugged, and the edgy boys leapt in to Kankri's aid so he wouldn't get his face beaten in, because that's what friends do, and Kankri was sortof kindof maybe their friend. 

Eridan picked up the note and handed it to Rose, as if it was still important, but she slapped it to the ground. 

Just as nothing stupider could possibly happen, Gamzee ran into the room, hands out to either side, and broke up the fight with a loud, grand honk. "Cronus you idiot, use your time powers to send Kankri back to right before you murdered your dad!" He screamed, terrified of the edgy Bois and the powerful Greek men brawling in the funeral parlour. 

"What?" Cronus asked incredulously. 

"Dude do you not fucking remember? This is a really inconvenient motherfucking time to be on your bullshit, Cronus." He yelled. 

"I thought you said no one could help me", Kankri yelled accusingly. 

"Well I lied. I just didn't want to help you, because Cronus is a terrible person and he deserves what comes next, alright? But then I felt bad about making you donate all your college money to a bunch of charities and clowning on you about therapy, so Cronus kindly use your time powers to send this Kankri back to before you decided to murder your dad." 

Dirk raised his hand. "Uh, me and my brother have time powers, not him." He Insisted. "but not here in this universe, back there in the sburb universe." 

"No, he has time powers." Gamzee insisted. "Cronus, just use them." 

"But then someone else is gonna kill my dad." He said, his voice full of fury.

"I mean, not necessarily," Gamzee said. "You could still kill him but be less of an idiot about it this time, not kick a deep fryer at him, not burn down the wedding tent and then not die of smoke inhalation." 

"I can't believe you want me to let someone else kill my dad!" Cronus huffed.

"He just told you that you could still kill me, Cronus. Did I make a stupid son?" Elias's spectre asked. 

"YEAH! IM DUMB AS HELL AND IM GONNA STAB YOU IN THE ABDOMEN." Cronus's ghost hollered, breaking loose from Hermes's grip and squaring up. 

"We really just need to take him back to Tartarus before he does more people the displeasure of existing in their presence." The goth dude said. "Come on, dad, you big fucking idiot. Back to jail we go." 

"Wait. Is Cronus like, the Greek diety, Cronus?" Rose asked. 

"Yeah." Hermes drunk ass replied. "He wasn't sneaky. His name is literally the same. Y'all are great big dummy stupid." 

Dirk raised his hand, like a kid in class. "That doesn't make sense", he interrupted. 

"SHHH." Gamzee hushed him aggressively.

"But it doesn't make any sense." Dirk insisted. 

"HONK!" Gamzee commanded, silencing Dirk, somehow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCLFtxpadE 😱😱😱😱😱


	32. Gamzee gets Involved for some reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tw mass shooting

"ok so let me get this straight," Gamzee said, praying that all his friends in the room would catch on if he emphasized the right words enough. "CRONUS", he said, gesturing to the ghostly boy and winking, "is the Greek diety of time and also uh... Vegetables or some shit?" He looked to Yaya.

Yaya nodded, wiping a tear from her eye. "Yes, vegetables and shit." She said. "And social upheaval or wild and inappropriate behavior."

"And as Dirk and Kankri may know, he used his godly clout to get us all a deal to live in this here universe." He nodded his head, glancing daggers to indicate that nobody wise should voice disagreement. "I remember, because I helped, since he is so terrible at talking and social skills." Gamzee said, making everyone fantastically uncomfortable. "So he's gotta go back to Tartarus now, which is prison and also hell, because that's where Cronus belongs, because he's just fucking awful." He nodded. Yaya also nodded, sniffling again. Hermes patted her back to calm her. "He turned himself in so we could all live here. So now we gotta hold up our end and just let them take him." Gamzee said. 

"But I don't wanna." Kankri said. 

"Do I have to go to Tartarus or just him and my dad?" Eridan asked. 

"Did you rape and eat anybody, or are you the human avatar of a diety that went crazy and committed patricide and attempted infanticide in ancient history?" The cosplay wings boy asked, holding the buff snacc's hand now that nobody was fighting anymore. The snacc blushed. 

"I don't think so." Eridan said.

"Probably not then." The wingboi replied. 

"Right. Since Kankri is having trouble letting go and I'm very grateful, we are going to help escort Cronus and his dad to maximum security hell prison." Gamzee said, making one more obvious wink to the squad before turning to the studly Greek dudes and bowing as he offered his services.

"What?" Hermes asked.

"Admittedly we actually really need help this time, since Hermes decided he couldn't deal with Cronus sober." The wingboi said. 

"Uh, yeaaah." The snacc in activewear agreed. 

The hot goth uncle looking dude eyed him suspiciously. "Yeah, ok, how much trouble could a couple of teenagers possibly cause?" 

Rose stood up. "I'm coming too. Im so goth I shit bats and I want to visit hell." 

"My sister truly does shit bats." Dirk assured. "She eats bats, so it's logically assured that she shits them too. That's just science. I can come to keep her out of trouble." 

The goth uncle eyed them suspiciously as well. "Four teenagers is twice as many teenagers as two teenagers is. I'm getting a little suspicious about your motives." 

"We're very good children." Jade said, stepping in. "Me and Karkat have very good morals, we'll help you keep all these naughty teenagers in line." Karkat glared at her for volunteering them, as he wanted no part in this. 

The goth uncle leaned against a coffin to glower at them all with distrust, his pose revealing the anime aesthetic of his legs. "no." Anime legs goth uncle said.

"Aww, let them tour hell, maybe they'll all decide to be good." The hot snacc in activewear said. 

"Especially that one." The cosplay wings laziboi said, still holding the snacc's hand as he pointed to Eridan with the one that remained free. "he's probably going to shoot up a school if he doesn't." He snapped his fingers as he said this, opening a portal to hell which Hermes began stumbling toward very slowly, ghosts and Yaya in tow.

Eridan began to scream an unholy scream, leaping forward and wrestling away Jake's shotgun with supernatural strength. "EVERYONE WANTS ME TO SHOOT A PLACE UP, HUH? He shreiked in a crackly teen boy voice. "FUCK IT? WHY KEEP FIGHTING FATE, RIGHT? IM SHOOTING YA'LL UP RIGHT HERE." He continued, leveling the shotgun at wingyboi and firing a slug into his chest. Athletic wear buff boi screamed in shock and horror as Eridan racked another slug into the chamber and rapidly projected it into his buff meaty pecs. "ERIDAN'S A SCHOOL SHOOTER! HE'S AN ALIENATED WHITE BOY WITH VENGEANCE AND A PLAN." he screamed, blasting Hermes square in the spine and sending him tumbling. "NOBODY TALK TO ERIDAN! YOU'RE GONNA END UP ON HIS HIT LIST WHEN HE SHOOTS UP THE SCHOOL BECAUSE HE THINKS WOMEN ARE A PLAN TO OVERTHROW THE CAPITALIST GOVERNMENT AND RUIN SOCIETY" He screamed dramatically, firing into anime legs goth uncle. "I BET HE GETS ALL HIS NEWS FROM BEN SHAPIRO AND STEPHEN CROWDER AND BELIEVES IN THE GREAT REPLACEMENT!" Eridan yelled, firing a volley of slugs into the portal as the same four guys tried to come running right back out if it at them. "WELL YOU'RE WRONG! YOU'RE ALL WRONG! ERIDAN'S PROGRESSIVE. ERIDAN SAYS TRANS RIGHTS." He fired the last slug into the portal, hitting a third furious copy of anime legs goth uncle before whipping a bayonette out of his pocket, fixing it to the shotgun and charging into the breach with a bloodcurdling warcry. 

All the children looked at each other, unable to hear from all the shotgun rounds in a closed space. Gamzee grabbed Cronus's ghostly hand and sprinted with him into the portal. The rest of the children, except for Rose, and also Yaya followed out of sheer intrigue and desire to fight some of the Greek gods, not considering that it might close behind them. 

Rose stooped and picked up Eridan's note, curious about what he had thought must have been so Important. 

"Hey, Rose", it read, "My ma's probably going to move me back to Greece now that we've basically got nothing left in America and she's broke and depressed, so I'm probably never going to get another chance to talk to you again since you've blocked me on pretty much every single messenger program I can think of. I just wanted you to know that I'm really sorry for my constant harassment, the truth is that I just thought you were cool and I really liked your shameless acceptance of magic and spooky dooky stuff. I like all that stuff too, but I can't admit it to myself because of how unscientific it is, and I wish I could be more confident like you. I stand by my statements that you'd be cooler as an omnivore and that your titties look soft and it's be hella cool of you to let me touch them, but I understand now that it's inappropriate for me to expect you to do things just because I like them, and that you should only do the stuff you like. anyway, I cna guarantee I'll be here for at least another week if you reconsider the titty thing. 

I'm sorry! Goodbye. -Eridan"

rose scrunched her nose in disgust at the shitty apology and wandered through the portal to tour hell while the gods were distracted fighting her friends.

Elias's ghost approached his stoned wife and attempted to comfort her in the quiet, empty room stinking of ichor from corpses of the fallen avatars of gods. The preist meant to officiate the funeral walked in, saw the shitwreck, and turned directly back around, wanting absolutely nothing to do with this business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCLFtxpadE 😱😱😱😱😱


	33. Cronus asks for help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tw I say pussy coward because it sounds funny

Gamzee ran as fast as his legs could carry him, dragging Cronus's now seemingly very solid ghost behind him. As he approached the pits of Tartarus, he made a heroic and powerful leap, falling feetfirst without fear into actual hell with a determined look as Cronus screamed like a a pussy coward. As he realized the fall was going to fucking be a while, he stopped. 

"Gamzee, I don't even fuck with you. Why are you so determined to take me to hell?" He asked. 

"This is a terrible time to not remember. Cronus, you tricked the Greek pantheon into thinking you were their dumbfuck powerful titan Cronus and not just our dumbfuck powerless 1950s greaser weeaboo Cronus and now we have to go ask the real Cronus to use his time powers to send Kankri back to stop you from getting yourself killed. You know why? When they take your stupid ass to Cronus's cell in hell prison, they're going to notice that he's still fucking in there and then they're going to get pissed we tricked them and come wreck all our shit because they're mad and petty. I actually need you to live a really long time while they criminally neglect their incestuous uncle dad or whatever kind of Alabama style relationship they got to this guy. Preferably, you should live longer than me so I can be safe in Christian heaven by the time they realize all this."

"Ok, good point. But how are we going to get Cronus to do that for us?" Cronus asked.

"Idk, suck his dick probably. These dudes were infamously into little boys, but for the record you're doing this and not me. I didn't start all this trouble, I only benefitted from it." 

Cronus sighed in resignation. The two of them hit the ground and Gamzee continued running, as if he knew somehow where he was going; but when they arrived, the cell was empty. The two boys stared in through the bars to make sure they werent just looking from the wrong angle or something, but the cell marked specifically for Cronus's, Cronus's cell, stood truly abandoned. 

Gamzee turned and asked the guy in the adjacent cell, "hey, where is he? Is he out in the yard or what?" 

"That guy escaped years ago." The prisoner said, spitting on the ground to look tough and salty. " They were lookin' for him til just a little bit ago, I heard round the yard that they found him running an avatar in some doomed alien universe." 

Gamzee stared at the prisoner, who obviously bought Cronus's bullshit just as hard as the Greek pantheon had. "That's not the truth, where is he? Is he in the infirmary? Do people get sick here?" He asked in a panic. 

"Cronus is right there you twat." The hard and salty prisoner said, spitting again and pointing to Cronus. "You're the worst detective ever. Cronus, you better run your stupid ass back out of here before someone puts you back in that cell." 

Cronus stared, dumbfounded. Gamzee tugged his hand. "Come on bro, this guy's fucking with us. We have to go find the real Cronus before we get caught." 

"Naw." Cronus said. "I'm just gonna use my time powers." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was back in the Serket-Captor wedding tent again, the air rich with the smells of fattening foods, Gamzee reaching for his burgers. This time, he didn't slap his hands away. "Alright, listen bro, you can take as many burgers as you want as long as you take some to Tech N9ne." He said, calmly, as if in a trance. Gamzee excitedly agreed and scampered off to take burgers to Tech N9ne.

The wedding ended, and the crowds came including Damara, who once again informed him that she was gonna kill his dad. Cronus waved his hand placidly, telling her to do what she wanted. Damara did exactly what she wanted, and killed Elias Ampora with the knife- but not before she'd used it to peel his dick like a cucumber. Juggallos gathered round to watch the spectacle, assuming it must be part of the horrorcore wedding attractions. As his dad screamed in pain, Cronus took over chopping vegetables for his Yaya while the rest of his family ran to help their patriarch. He took a zenlike breath and appreciated being alive, seeing the fat manlet Kankri he remembered approaching him from across the tent. "Sorry I'm late." Kankri said. "I actually wasn't going to come, but Karkat told me you and your family were catering, so I figured I'd come help you out." 

Cronus smiled at him with tears in his eyes. Thankfully, he could blame the onions, but he wouldn't because that would be a lame Reddit joke. "Kankri, good.hop on the grill, we gotta talk serious." 

"Ok." Kankri said unsurely.

"You're going to think I got sentimental because of the wedding, but I'm not, hear me out, and I mean all the way out, especially the parts that sound crazy." 

"Go ahead." Kankri said, flipping a burger. 

"You remember Homestuck?" He asked. 

"Yeah." 

"I got us out of Homestuck by tricking the Greek pantheon into thinking im the mythical titan cronus, and when they find out I lied to them, I'm going to hell no matter what I do with the rest of my life, no matter how good a person I decide to be, because they're going to be really pissed off." 

Kankri looked at him with concern, but said nothing.

"Give that one a flip you're letting it burn on one side." Cronus said, gesturing to a burger. Kankri picked his jaw back up off the floor and flipped the burger as instructed. "Anyway, I just want you to know I totally understand I'm not really lovable or particularly desirable and I've been pressuring you really hard to marry me, but you don't have to. You've got big plans and you're probably gonna meet someone in college and have a better life than you ever could have got with me." He wiped his eyes. "I guess what I'm saying is that if this is really just a physical relationship and I'm holding you back from better things, I'm breaking up with you, and I'm gonna get out if your house." 

"No, Cronus." Kankri said firmly, choking a bit. "I..." He said, the words caught in his throat, the unwillingness to admit his true feelings still quite powerful. "I love you, Cronus. I thought about getting married before, on my own. We should definitely save money first so we don't have to cater our own wedding."

"Wait, what?" Cronus stammered, incredulous.

"I love you and I want to get married. I just didn't want to admit it to myself, but it's not because of you. I blamed you, but it was me and my own insecurities. We're engaged now. We're going to have to tell my parents." 

"Oh wow, you guys are engaged?" Aranea asked, spattered in blood from the gruesome murder she'd just watched her undead friend commit before moving on and ascending to heaven. "Congratulations!" She said, clapping for them excitedly. "Don't tell anyone yet, though, let my mom have her dumb wedding." She smiled genuinely at the two of them, clasping her hands over her heart with joy and a feeling that if someone could love Cronus Ampora, she should never worry about dating again. She would find love too, everyone could do it if Cronus had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for finishing this gigantic fucking shitpost, you are a true champion and I have no idea how you managed this gargantuan accomplishment. I'm really sorry I wasn't able to write the promised fulfilling and loving sex scene between Kankri and Cronus I promised back in 2018- I've since had some personal problems and developed a life-disrupting sexual aversion that gives me full blown panic attacks, and I hope you can forgive me for writing a check I wasn't able to cash. If you somehow managed to enjoy this trainwreck, stay tuned for more shitposting- same bat time, same bat network.
> 
> ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜https://youtu.be/oG7jKUHsLfY💜💙💚💛🧡❤️


End file.
